Cherry Blossoms in Boss' Hair
by Dionys
Summary: Yashiro goes to jail. So Doumeki almost immediately lands himself in jail too. One-shot. [Plus some other Saezuru one-shots and drabbles, post-canon mostly.]
1. Yashiro Goes to Jail

_This story was inspired by a cherry-blossom-themed extra by Yoneda Kou, recently posted on Lustfulcat's tumblr._

* * *

hinseikai was in trouble. Not all the trouble, but some of it. Enough that Yashiro was looking at three years non-parole.

'There's such a thing as conjugal visits, you know.'

Doumeki was silent.

They were at the boat's helm being steadily showered in cherry blossom petals. Other boats and ferries chugged past, heading upstream. They, on the other hand, were floating with the current. Without any sort of challenge or effort. Even the petals seemed to be travelling in the same direction, wafting gently onto the deck as though having decided to rest for a moment.

Yashiro had just awoken from his mouth-open nap on Doumeki's lap. Nanahara, supremely annoyed at something Doumeki had said, was nowhere to be seen. It was just Doumeki and a slightly wine-drunk Boss on deck.

'You'll come visit me, right? Conjugal or otherwise?'

A petal landed on Yashiro's hair delicately enough that he didn't seem to notice. Doumeki was surprised to note he couldn't bring himself to brush it off. His chest felt like it was swirling with petals, but not the nice, ethereally pink kind. The ones inside him were black and tar-like and feathery. They were feathers, he realised. Crow feathers or something. Something not nice.

Yashiro knew Doumeki was put out. He'd been like that for days, ever since he'd broken the news of his likely conviction. There was no reaction from Doumeki. Nothing overt anyway. The guy hadn't broken down or thrown his fist into a wall or thrown anyone out of a window [see _Careful Now_ for prequel]. So Yashiro couldn't really get much of a gauge on how much it was affecting him.

He withstood the tickling of the petal in his hair for quite a while before it became clear that Doumeki wasn't about to brush it off. He raised a hand and did it himself.

Right. So Doumeki was _really_ upset.

He sighed. It was heavy work trying to lift both their spirits.

'Stop moping already. Can't we just enjoy the hanami in peace?'

Yashiro had organised his own final send-off, despite the note of fatalism that doing so invited. Apparently, the antidote to fatalism, for both himself and his men (barring Doumeki), was copious amounts of alcohol. The sounds of drinking and coarse laughter issued from inside the boat. It all sounded far away to Doumeki. He could barely even remember what he'd said that pissed Nanahara off so much. His mind was trapped between both the past and the future.

 _If you went to jail, Boss,_ he'd once said, _you would come out dead._

 _Oh, you mean death by sex? I've always wanted to try that!_

Doumeki remembered making a face at Boss' flippant response. Boss had been holding a drink, his face aglow with the thought. Now the memory of their prescient conversation created a tornado of shadowy, feathery somethings in his chest.

They might find him not guilty. Doumeki held onto the thought like a lifeline. Misumi could pull all the strings. Juries can be bought or threatened or replaced. Surely.

'Don't get your hopes up,' said Yashiro at that moment.

Doumeki looked down in surprise. Yashiro's eyes were closed again. Still, he felt as though he'd been X-rayed.

There was a sudden gust of wind. The petals ran off, skittering across the deck and the river as if they just remembered something urgent they had to do.

For once, Doumeki defied his boss. He kept his hopes up.

* * *

And they were dashed to pieces not three days later.

'We,' said a petite, middle-aged lady in a voice that seemed larger than she was, 'find the defendant guilty of all charges.'

Before she read out her line, Doumeki had been staring at one of the witnesses in a row ahead of him. An unassuming close-cropped head of hair above a cop's uniform. The guy from Time Number 1. The fucktard who'd been fucking Yashiro the first time they'd ever met.

 _Of all the guys you've seen fucking me, I think you've killed or maimed them all_ , Boss had said* with a smile in his voice. _Except that random first detective, but I can't even remember his name. Maybe we'll run into him one day._

Knowing who he was and that he'd fucked Boss would have been enough for Doumeki to have done what he did. But when the fucktard decided to turn Yashiro in despite all the deals and all the sex, with enough evidence to put him away for three years, the fucktard had built and sanded his own coffin.

It was surprisingly easy, really. Doumeki wondered why it didn't happen more often outside of unrealistic cop dramas.

Against the backdrop of the gavel being slammed, a few outcries from Yashiro's men, and Yashiro standing up to be handcuffed, Doumeki got to his feet slowly and calmly. Only a few people bothered looking at him as he headed up the side aisle towards the front of the courtroom. As he walked past the first row of benches, passing alongside Yashiro himself, who looked up in mild surprise, Doumeki turned his head sideways for a brief recon. He noticed Misumi in the second row hanging his head. The guy looked near tears, he thought idly.

From Doumeki's deadpan expression and his demeanour, almost everyone took him for a cop or a lawyer and paid him no mind. He seemed like the type who might walk up to the judge and whisper something in his ear.

Instead, Doumeki drew up near the bailiff posted at the defendant's entrance. Like he was picking his own keys off the peg in his apartment, he swiftly took the gun out of the bailiff's holster, spun around, aimed at the front row of witnesses and shot Time Number 1 in the chest and shoulder. He then immediately dropped the gun and raised his arms. Nothing in his face had changed even slightly since the time he stood up.

Against the new backdrop of screams and scrambles for cover, three bailiffs slammed him into the ground.

Yashiro watched, hands cuffed before him, mouth agape. Doumeki saw his face before he was floored. Aside from the fact that Boss' eyes were open, his expression was almost identical to the one he wore when he was fast asleep on Doumeki's lap in the boat with cherry blossoms falling in his hair.

* * *

'Did you really think they'd just let you mosey into prison right next to me?'

'I…'

Doumeki hadn't thought that far ahead. He'd just wanted the black, crow-like feathers to stop swirling about inside him. And they had for a brief moment when the cop was sprawled and squirming on the ground.

But the feathers came back in full force when he found out how long it would take before he joined his boss in prison. Bail, arraignment, hearing, trial, sentencing. The legal system was a great big fucking maze. It would take almost a month, even with Misumi's strings.

And then Doumeki found out the fucktard cop hadn't even died. Doumeki was about to be done in for attempted murder. Again.

'You're really bad at killing people,' Yashiro observed. 'If you hadn't offed Nakazawa and thrown Inami out that window, I'd think you were philosophically against it or something.'

Yashiro heard that he sounded like a strange combination of amused, annoyed and proud.

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a while.

'Are you okay, Boss?'

'I've only been in here for two days. I'm rocking the prison get-up, I must say. I mean, I miss my vest and tie, but the orange kind of suits me.'

Silence.

'I'm fine, you dolt. Worry about yourself.'

'I'll be there, Boss. Soon.'

The strength of his tone was somewhat surprising. Yashiro had heard it before but it still warmed him in a way he couldn't quite place. This odd emotion was quickly replaced by a very specific embarrassment and then mild self-deprecation. Standard reaction to a Doumeki Chikara display of undying loyalty.

He was also glad it sounded like Doumeki hadn't picked up on his blatant lies. The swelling around his eye was getting worse.

* * *

Furious with himself and his strings for being unable to save Yashiro from a guilty conviction, Misumi pulled them again, all of them, with gusto and bribes and threats and more bribes. He ensured that Yashiro would be treated well in prison, that his non-parole period would be magically sped up, that Doumeki's trial was next on roster, that he would be sentenced to the same prison and that he would be made Yashiro's cellmate.

Of all of these strings, only the ones pertaining to Doumeki's trial, sentencing and cell allocation actually panned out.

Shinseikai in general, and Yashiro specifically, had an anthology of enemies. Some were cops, others inmates. Some were there because of Yashiro directly, others were there because of something he'd said or done that eventually led back to them. Either way, he was avidly detested.

And his proclivities were notorious.

And he was beautiful.

 _If you went to jail, Boss, you would come out dead._

* * *

The first beating took place in the cafeteria.

Yashiro couldn't identify the exact nature of his erratic heartbeat. The room was not quite cacophonous, but it was large and echoing and filled to the brim with men.

Men.

Men.

All wearing the same get-up. All smelling like men do when there are a lot of them in one space. Yashiro was almost disappointed when there was no fanfare as he entered. Sure he'd gotten quite a few stares, catcalls and vividly detailed sexual threats over the past day as he'd walked past cells towards his own. But there was no resounding hush when he entered the cafeteria. No one had shoved him against the wall, thrown a fist into his stomach and then forced their cock down his throat.

So much hype for nothing.

He waited for his tray to be loaded up with questionable prison food and turned to face the cafeteria at large. Where to sit?

He smiled. More like high school than prison. Now if only there was a young Kageyama to torture somewhere.

'What the _fuck_ are you smiling at, pretty boy?'

The guy was all arms and no neck. Typical thug, whether in high school or prison. He fixed Yashiro with a disbelieving leer and set aside his tray on a nearby table just to swing his immense arms freely as he approached.

Yashiro's smile didn't fade.

'Actually, I was –'

The punch was thrown into his stomach, just like he'd imagined. He dropped the tray and the contents went flying.

He ended up in the infirmary for a few hours with a few damaged ribs and a swollen eye, courtesy of Neckless and two cronies.

* * *

The first time he was raped didn't take place in the shower, which, all in all, was a closely-guarded affair.

It was after hours in his cell. Three guards.

Batons were used in terrible ways.

That landed him in the infirmary for several days.

While he was being held down by one of the cops, his own pillowcase stuffed in his mouth to smother his cries and another cop fucking him viciously from behind like he was channelling all the hatred in humanity, Yashiro's elderly cellmate had turned gently in his futon to face the far wall.

Yashiro almost felt a surge of affection for him. And for Misumi. No doubt his Oyaji had made sure he'd get the oldest, frailest and most harmless cellmate in the world.

Shame it didn't protect him from much.

* * *

Countless times, Yashiro thought, as he quietly followed the guards down the echoing passage in the middle of the night. I've done this countless times before, when I was younger. True, the batons were new. And particularly spiteful. But he'd been passed around like a rag countless times before. ( _'It's not a rag!'_ an old Ryuuzaki said suddenly, from out of nowhere).

He obediently stepped into the storage room when one of the guards held the door open for him. He almost thanked the guy and stopped himself just in time. A short laugh escaped him. This earned him a heavy backhand across the face.

The storage room became a regular haunt (after Yashiro's elderly cellmate, bless his shrivelled soul, had tried to put in a complaint about what he'd seen in the cell).

Countless times, Yashiro thought, as he was bent over the table. And yet, now…

The old Ryuuzaki, who had been trying to get across something important about that old rag, Yashiro now realised fondly, swam into his mind.

He was almost immediately replaced by Doumeki. Doumeki, who had been in his thoughts constantly. Despite all efforts to the contrary. Against his better judgment. He wished with every part of his body, the parts that were whole and the parts that were tattered, that Doumeki was with him.

* * *

Time behaved strangely where Boss was concerned. Doumeki had noticed this ever since he'd first seen Boss, when he spoke to him for the first time, heard the words 'lustful cat' and 'public toilet' come out of his own mouth when he answered Boss' questions. Time either dragged out the painful moments so he felt like he was watching them from outside, or whirled past so quickly he couldn't keep up.

It was doing the first thing, dragging itself out, as he thudded up the corridor towards his cell. Towards Yashiro. He hadn't seen Boss in over a month.

He could feel eyes on him through the cell windows and bars. He heard the occasional threat. It all bounced off him. His entire being was focused on the guard in front of him, who was shorter than him by a head and a half. His sure, quick step and the clanging of the keys in his belt. That guard was the most important human being in the world, because he alone could lead Doumeki to Boss.

All too soon, and far too late (time fucking up again), the guard stopped and unlocked a cell door.

'In here,' he said unnecessarily.

Doumeki stepped into the cell, heart in his mouth.

Yashiro looked up from his futon. He was leaning against the wall, head in a book. He smiled.

'About damn time.'

The door clanged shut behind him, the key was turned and the guard left.

Doumeki stared. The black feathers rushed him again, all at once, from his chest to his feet and then up to his throat. He could barely breathe.

Boss was covered in bruises. His lips were cut and his left eye was barely open beneath the angry purple swelling. Cuts layered his face and neck. His right arm was, of course, still in the sling. His left was now also in a cast. Only the fingers of this hand appeared to be functioning. The book was held open precariously.

'You're going to have to do _a lot_ of things for me,' Yashiro said, indicating his left arm. 'Embarrassing things. Bodily things. Amazing how pathetic it is when you don't have the proper use of either arm.'

Fuck he's huge, Yashiro thought meanwhile, for what must have been the thousandth time. The span of Doumeki's shoulders alone seemed to eclipse the doorway. He felt something melt behind his ribcage. Like something crumbling and dissolving in the warmth of the sun.

And then Yashiro noticed, to his absolute shock, that his stolid, silent bodyguard was crying.

'Doumeki…'

The shame of it collapsed on Doumeki like a physical weight. He'd let Boss down again. Again. How many times could he possibly let him down? How many times would Boss be hurt because he wasn't there? Because he'd failed?

He stood there, right in front of the door, and couldn't at all stop the tears from running down his face. Yashiro's look was one of alarm. Doumeki averted his eyes and willed his fists to stop shaking.

'I'm sorry, Boss.'

The words and the sound of his voice made Yashiro's throat ache with sorrow.

There may have been sounds in the corridor and adjoining cells but neither heard it. The world may have been razed to the ground and neither would have budged. Yashiro stared at Doumeki for just long enough for his own pulse to settle. Then he put the book aside.

'Come here,' he said. 'Sit down.'

Doumeki hesitated. The tears hadn't let up and he barely noticed them anymore. He forced his legs to move and he walked towards Boss. He felt the softness of the futon beneath his feet without feeling it at all.

He knelt in front of Yashiro and dragged his eyes up to meet his gaze. The wounds looked even worse from up close.

 _You have nice eyes,_ said an old Yashiro. The current one echoed his thought. Even when those eyes were swimming in tears. Tears on my behalf, Yashiro thought. I have someone who cries for me.

Reaching up his left arm, Yashiro pushed his hand as far out of the stiff, white cast as it would go. He held Doumeki's face in a grip that was firmer than it needed to be.

'You're here now,' he said, slowly and clearly. 'You'll protect me now. Won't you?'

Doumeki breathed in, caught yet again in Yashiro's mellow gaze. His tears suddenly felt utterly infantile. He blinked hard and nodded.

Yashiro smiled.

'Good.'

He rested his forehead on Doumeki's, wondering about the thing that was slowly seeping through him, spreading right to his fingertips. A bored, ironic voice informed him he was, quite possibly, happy. More so in that moment, bruised and battered on the floor of a prison cell, than he'd been at any other time he could remember.

And then he found himself wondering about his elderly cellmate. He hoped Misumi had thought to move him somewhere nice.

* * *

 _ **Author's note:**_ Cherry Blossoms _is the sort-of sequel to my crazy long story_ Careful Now _, if anyone wants to see how/why Doumeki threw someone out a twentieth-storey window (and wants to see a lot of messed up sex)._


	2. Yashiro Goes to Jail (Part II)

_Final part of the jail story. Equal helpings of angst, fluff and sex._

* * *

And so Yashiro and Doumeki spent three years together in a cramped two-person cell.

The first few months were rocky. Settling pains, Yashiro called it. He called it that even though it was painful mostly for the inmates who had given him a rough time before Doumeki showed up.

 _Pound._

'Mff…!'

 _Pound. Pound._

Blood splattered on the floor like paint being flung off a brush. In deliberate little flecks and strokes. So artistic, Yashiro thought.

'Did you say something? I didn't catch that.'

 _Pound._

'Mfforry! Fftop!'

'Doumeki, would you stop battering the gentleman's face for two seconds? He's trying to say something.'

He's getting better, Yashiro observed when Doumeki only got in three, maybe four more punches before he managed to stop himself. He looked up.

That look in Doumeki's eye. Yashiro hoped he would never get used to it.

It took effort but he drew his gaze away and focused on the unfortunate inmate cowering on the floor between Doumeki's knees.

'I'm sorry, could you repeat what you were saying earlier?'

The inmate gasped and his eyes bulged.

'I'm… I'm sorry! I'm sorry, okay? Please tell him to stop.'

'He has stopped.'

The guy kept blubbering. It was hard to believe the same man had wrenched Yashiro's good arm behind his back hard enough to sprain his wrist, pushed him against the cistern of the toilet and fucked him while squeezing his injured wrist so tight he passed out from the pain.

He, Yashiro that is, now sat on the lid of that same toilet, legs crossed, wrist healed and left arm braced casually on the cistern.

He, the inmate that is, was being pummelled into the tiled floor at his feet.

Karmic retribution (aka Doumeki retribution) for the raping and the sprained wrist included: broken nose, broken teeth, dislocated left shoulder, possibly a fractured rib and almost definitely a mild concussion.

'I'm sorry,' the guy said in a high, embarrassing keen. Tears leaked from his eyes.

Straddling his torso, Doumeki wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, taking deep breaths. He was itching to start pounding again.

Yashiro sighed.

'You promise you feel bad about what you did?'

'Yes!'

'Really, really bad?'

'Yes!' he sobbed, tears and blood running together into the corner of his mouth.

'Well, I think we're okay, then. As long as you're really, super sorry.'

'I am!'

Yashiro felt in his pocket for his cigarettes. He frowned when he remembered he'd smoked his last smuggled Garam the previous day.

'Damn.'

Ears tuned to even the slightest change in Boss' tone, Doumeki looked up. At this, Yashiro smiled.

Doumeki's heart gave a little flip. Beautiful in orange. Beautiful with healing cuts on his face. Beautiful even just sitting on the lid of a toilet. Doumeki couldn't for the life of him figure out how Boss managed to do it.

He completely forgot about the man beneath him when Yashiro leaned forwards and kissed his lips. He'd just begun to respond when Yashiro pulled back.

'Keep going,' he said.

The inmate on the ground spluttered.

'But! But you said -!'

'That I forgive you because you're super sorry?' Yashiro's laugh echoed. 'In this world, you can be a rapist or you can be an idiot. Bad idea to be both.'

He uncrossed his legs gracefully and stood up. Doumeki leaned to the side to let him pass through the stall door.

'Stop whenever you feel like it,' he added airily to Doumeki over his shoulder.

Doumeki turned back to his kill. It was rare for Boss to give him free rein. The inmate's terrified eyes and whimpering fuelled something that had first been awoken in him the day he'd seen his sister being violated.

Even from outside the bathroom, the impacts of Doumeki's fists were audible. Overkill, maybe, Yashiro mused. But an important message to send to everyone else.

* * *

Surprisingly, Doumeki didn't come across a great deal of unsolvable problems in jail. He had no problem wailing on the guys that Yashiro pointed out to him (he'd even made a mental list before Yashiro fished out an actual list and slipped it into his pocket).

He had no problem being the wall between Boss and a roomful of inmates, whether in the exercise yard or in the cafeteria.

He had no problem intimidating anyone who so much as looked at Boss the wrong way.

But he did have a problem, a major one, with the fact that Boss had to be naked in the shower. Along with a whole bunch of other naked men.

It always made his pulse skyrocket whenever Yashiro hummed to himself as he scrubbed his body, flicked back his hair, let water trickle over the ridge of his Adam's apple, all while impervious to multiple leering gazes.

Or soaking them up. Doumeki couldn't be sure which.

The guards stationed at the bathroom door were no better with their flushed, skewed glances. They didn't even have the excuse of not having laid eyes on a woman for a long time. They probably had wives waiting back home, Doumeki thought, his irrational jealousy reaching a level where he was indignant on behalf of jilted wives everywhere.

Yashiro couldn't care less about the leering. He didn't even do it for the attention, even though, with Doumeki there, he was finally free to enjoy the attention without the fear of actual violence.

He did it because of the singular thrill of watching what it did to his bodyguard.

'Let them stare,' he said dismissively. 'What does it matter if they're imagining me falling on my knees and sucking them off? Or, you know, spit-roasting me on the steamy bathroom floor. Or, whatever, coming on my face under the running water. It's all in their minds, right?'

He had to suck in his cheeks to keep from laughing at the look on Doumeki's face.

Only a week after he'd first joined Boss in jail, Doumeki again found himself in the showers with his heart rate climbing steadily.

It would take another week or so before inmates learned how dangerous it was for them to be staring at the beautiful man while the large man was nearby. And so one of them, a built fellow with shoulder-length hair and exaggeratedly slanted eyebrows who'd been staring at Yashiro for long minutes, caved to his inner alpha and whistled.

'Hey, faggot!'

Yashiro glanced round from where he was busy shampooing, eyebrows raised in polite curiosity.

'Why don't you bend over and show us all your pretty pink asshole?'

Yashiro had a fantastic retort in mind and he was almost annoyed that he didn't get to use it. At that moment, Doumeki left his side, crossed the bathroom to Slanted Eyebrows and slammed him, mouth-first, into the wall.

The guards broke them up around about when the guy's face was slowly turning purple above Doumeki's iron grip around his neck.

* * *

Before being strangled nearly to death, Eyebrows had gotten in a good punch or two himself. Doumeki walked away with a sore jaw and bleeding lip.

Laughter burst sporadically from Yashiro like steam from a faulty kettle. He strolled down the corridor towards their cell with his hair smelling fresh and Doumeki on his heels.

'Idiot. All he did was make a trucker call. And not even a very creative one at that. Is that all it takes to set you off these days?'

A few months ago, Doumeki would have apologised. But by that stage, he could tell that Boss was joking and, in fact, quite pleased. So he let himself bask in the indirect praise. The cut on his lip was a very small price to pay.

In their cell, Yashiro rifled through a few smuggled items stashed in the cabinet above the sink and found a small tube of antiseptic cream.

'Come here.'

'I'm fine, Boss.'

'Just do it.'

Yashiro settled on the futon and Doumeki knelt before him, feeling both foolish and happy at the unexpected attention.

'Stretch your legs out, I need to get closer.'

Doumeki complied. Yashiro slid forward and sat between his thighs, his own legs on either side of Doumeki's hips. He concentrated and dabbed at the cut with the tip of his finger.

Half-smile. Half-lidded eyes. Doumeki let his gaze roam freely, feeling something warm unravel inside him in layers.

The sky was a deep, thoughtful violet beyond the window. Dusk was always a strange time of day. Doumeki had noticed that during his first stint in prison when the window provided as much entertainment as anything else. Dusk was always unpredictable. It could choose whatever colour it wanted.

'There. All done.'

'Thank you.'

In a single, near imperceptible move, Yashiro closed the distance between them. Doumeki's heart rate suffered again.

Yashiro moved his lips over Doumeki's neck. He selected a place, stopped and kissed. Nibbled. Then he sucked. Hard.

It was quite a thing, Yashiro thought, to feel a shiver run through a body that big. He sucked for a good long while until he was sure the hickey would last a week, minimum.

Doumeki, meanwhile, was again struggling to control himself. There was nothing he could do about his erection, which was in full force and pressing against Yashiro's stomach. But he could stop himself from going further. He had to.

It had only been a week, after all, since he'd walked into that cell for the first time. Since the sight of Boss' injuries had shocked him to tears. And from Yashiro's own reports, it sounded like other less visible places were also fairly rent and would need weeks to heal properly.

So the past week had been marked by hand-jobs, out-of-this-world blow jobs, and heavy, urgent kissing that lasted hours, resulted in exhausted lips and tongues and forced Yashiro to break away numerous times to laugh at himself and the state of his life in general.

But there was never more than that. Doumeki had always successfully held himself back.

And now here he was again, throwing reins and bits and blinkers on himself as Boss slowly rubbed up against his stiff cock.

'Doumeki,' said Yashiro suddenly, pulling his head back as though he'd just had a brilliant, unrelated idea.

'Yes?'

'Let's fuck.'

Doumeki stared, helpless.

'Boss…'

'Oh, come on. Please? I'm sick of make-out sessions.'

'The doctor said it would take weeks –'

'Yeah, but they didn't factor in my chronic horniness. That's their bad.'

'I don't think –'

Yashiro silenced him by slipping a hand past the lowest button of his orange jumpsuit and squeezing his cock.

Not long afterwards, Doumeki was pressing Yashiro into the futon, mouths locked, and Yashiro was trying to slip the lower half of his body out of his jumpsuit without Doumeki noticing. His theory was that if he caught Doumeki unaware, he could finally rip that mental chastity belt off him.

It didn't work. Doumeki broke the kiss and lifted himself up. Before he slipped away completely, Yashiro switched gears.

'They used batons, you know,' he said, his voice breathy and devious. 'The guards.'

Doumeki tried to block it out. It was a trick he knew well.

'Over and over again.' Yashiro wrapped his legs around Doumeki's hips. 'There was a point I honestly didn't think my ass could take any more. And you _know_ that's saying something. I thought, _De_ _ath by sex. Here it comes._ '

Doumeki tried and failed to untangle himself.

'Want to know how I kept from passing out? And possibly dying?'

 _No._

'I pretended it was you.'

Doumeki let out a small groan. His cock strained. It was entirely unfair the way Yashiro's hair was splayed on the futon.

'I came so many times imagining that their thick, hard batons were your cock. I even called out your name once.'

(That last one was a straight up lie, but Yashiro was feeling inspired.)

'Boss, please…'

His voice sounded tortured. One more straw needed to break the camel's back. Legs still locked, Yashiro lifted himself off the futon and put his mouth to Doumeki's ear.

'Fuck me harder than they did,' he murmured. 'Fuck me so hard I forget what they did to me.'

And that, finally, did the trick.

He stripped Boss of all the orange. He pushed Boss' knees up against his chest. He let his inhibitions race off into that strangely purple sunset. And he pushed his cock firmly and swiftly into Boss' body. He nearly sighed with relief.

Yashiro tilted his head back and moaned through his teeth. The pain was a lot worse than he'd imagined. The doctors, of course, had been right. He wasn't anywhere near ready. But at no point did the thought of stopping even cross his mind.

As his cock plunged in and out of that incredible vice-like heat, Doumeki ran his mouth and nose over the side of Boss' neck, breathing him in. While there, he didn't even bother fighting his sudden urge to sink his teeth into the skin. Yashiro cried out and gripped Doumeki's hair. The bite mark he left was, inadvertently, a perfect match for his hickey, if a lot larger and angrier.

His cock never quit.

'Oh, shit. Doumeki!' Yashiro felt old wounds opening again and his climax built quickly. 'Oh, fuck, I've missed your dick.'

In response, Doumeki pulled out, flipped Yashiro over and pulled his ass up in the air. His slid his cock in all the way, held it there, collected Yashiro's moan, and then started hammering again.

'Pull my hair!' Yashiro gasped. The pain was nearing unbearable. He had to come, and fast.

Doumeki growled and obeyed. Yashiro's chin left the ground and Doumeki fucked into his beautiful, curved body until he felt he was on the brink. Right before he came, he shoved two of his fingers so far into Yashiro's throat that he choked.

Like he'd found and pressed a tandem button, that one act caused them both to come at almost the same time.

A minute later, when sadist Doumeki slowly ebbed and faded along with the high from his climax, he hoped the Doumeki-of-late would surface. The one who had slowly come to terms with the awful things he did to Boss while they fucked. Things that Boss wanted him to do.

But when he raised his head and saw Yashiro's body shaking the way it did only after he'd gone too far, when he looked down and saw the few drops of blood on the futon, the new almost-enlightened Doumeki didn't have a chance.

His heart fell right to the bottom of his stomach. And there, on cue, was the nausea. He tried to scramble up and away.

Although he was still recovering from his climax, Yashiro saw this just in time.

'No, no, no, no,' he said hastily. He lifted his foot against Doumeki's chest (reminiscent of a time long past when Doumeki had resolved to go fetch him an edible 'caseless wiener'). 'None of that. No angst. Especially not in here, there's no room to fight demons.'

He was surprised when Doumeki fell back onto the futon without much resistance. His head was somewhere else completely, Yashiro realised. He almost (almost) felt a squirm of guilt.

It took three attempts to bring him back.

 **Attempt 1: Honesty**

'I really, really needed that,' he told him.

Sure, he was hurting. He was hurting a lot. Probably ought to run to the infirmary first thing tomorrow. But that was tomorrow's problem.

 **Attempt 2: Brute force**

When Doumeki still refused to look him in the eye and tried to get up again, Yashiro clicked his tongue and tried to hold him back. It was like holding a brick wall to his chest. A deeply reluctant brick wall.

'Stupid. Just stay still.'

For the first time since he'd arrived in prison, Doumeki wanted to be elsewhere. It was a simple and profound thought that made him quite upset.

Yashiro felt it.

 **Attempt 3: Fun little mind games**

'Okay,' he sighed finally. 'How about this? If you stop sulking, I'll let you ask me anything you want. Anything. And I'll answer honestly.'

He didn't know where the idea had come from. But as soon as Doumeki lifted his head to look at him, he was glad that the gods had stepped in to help.

'Anything?' Doumeki's voice was hoarse again, like it always was after sex.

'Anything.'

His eyes were suddenly like searchlights. Yashiro wondered if he should start regretting his god-sent idea. The atmosphere in the little cell shifted.

Doumeki hesitated. Then he spoke slowly.

'Did your mother know?'

Yashiro froze.

The moment stretched between them for a long time. It was his turn to want to escape.

But then his own words came to him. There was no room in here for that. And it was only Doumeki after all, his big idiot, hovering and staring. Waiting for Yashiro to answer a simple question honestly. His options, it seemed, had whittled down to just one.

'You know,' he said, in a voice that didn't sound like his. 'I always thought she must have.'

He paused. Doumeki waited, breath held.

'It would explain a few things.'

The absence. The guilty notes. The money left on the table. The utter, breathtaking lack of love.

'Then again…'

His voice trailed off. Doumeki waited some more.

But Yashiro's expression had changed. He was almost smiling. His eyes seemed relaxed. Settled.

Oh, Doumeki realised. That was it.

And then he understood that that was all there possibly could be.

Yashiro ran a finger down the old scar on his cheek and then over the very new cut on his lower lip.

'So. Done sulking now?'

Doumeki took a moment and then nodded once. He rolled onto the futon and rested his head beside Boss'. The desire for sleep suddenly came over him like it had been waiting to pounce.

'I was so sure you'd ask something lame,' said Yashiro, also sounding drowsy. 'Something like "Why me?"'

Doumeki, with a guilty flush, thought back to something he'd overheard at Kageyama's clinic.*

 _I think I already know, Boss._

He watched as Yashiro lifted one of his hands and examined it closely.

 _And I'm trying to live up to it._

* * *

Months passed.

When the warden finally arrived with his two guards, Yashiro was leaning heavily against Doumeki's shoulder, reading. Doumeki, having abandoned a particularly brutal Sudoku halfway, was staring out the window at the antics of a couple of sparrows on the telegraph wire. It was nearing evening and the glow from Yashiro's bedside lamp (one of his many openly smuggled items) was getting brighter.

The door swung open and they both looked up.

'Yashiro, I presume.'

The warden, Shizuka, was in his fifties and reminded Yashiro instantly of Misumi. Except, where Misumi was all gruff charm, there was a steely, fake coldness in this man's smile.

Doumeki found himself regretting the fact that Boss was closer to the door. Yashiro felt him tense up immediately.

'Hey, Warden,' he said, without bothering to drop the book or lift himself off Doumeki's shoulder. 'I was wondering when you'd pay me a visit.'

'I was hoping to have a private word.'

'Nowhere more private than here.'

Shizuka looked at Doumeki.

'I mean without your… cellmate.'

'Ah.'

'If you would be so kind as to follow us –'

'See, slight problem there.' Yashiro let the book flop to his chest. 'Doumeki would probably insist that he come with me.'

Shizuka's smile flickered just a little. He glanced at one of the guards, who casually rested a hand on the gun in his holster.

'Let's just keep this simple, okay?' said Shizuka with a new edge in his voice.

Yashiro sighed as if annoyed, passed the book to Doumeki and sat up properly. The way he did it was subtle but somehow he'd managed to position himself directly between the visitors and Doumeki.

'Whip out all the guns you like, Warden,' said Yashiro. His tone hadn't changed in the slightest. 'But after learning first-hand about the hospitality of your guards during my first month here, I have just the one rule.'

He tilted his head slowly to indicate Doumeki.

'Where I go, he goes.'

Doumeki's heart gave a single loud throb.

Yashiro shrugged. 'And you can shoot me or him or both of us if you don't like it. Although I was really looking forward to the ending of that book. Hey, ever read _American Gods,_ Warden? Maybe you can tell me how it ends.'

After a long silence that threatened to take on a life of its own, a vein throbbed in Shizuka's temple.

It had always been an idle threat but he was the type of man to consider all options. And the one that involved his guard's gun being drawn and fired would involve so much paperwork.

And the only thing he hated more than queers, Yakuza and lack of complete control… was paperwork.

* * *

That was how Doumeki ended up standing by the doorway in the warden's low-lit office while Yashiro and the warden spoke across the desk. One of the guards hovered near Shizuka while the other kept his eye on Doumeki.

They discussed a range of things. Yashiro's blatant smuggling ring. Yashiro's well-established prison gang at the top of which he now perched, both feared and loved. The many inmates who ended up in the infirmary thanks to Yashiro's well-trained dog.

To Yashiro, they sounded like a list of accomplishments. He wished he'd brought his resume to update it.

They made a few deals. Despite being able to drop Misumi's name as leverage, Yashiro had to compromise. He knew he'd have to eventually.

The conversation itself didn't bother him. It was that cold, fake smile and the glint in his eye. He's what Misumi would have looked like without a soul, Yashiro realised. His skin crawled.

'Well,' said Yashiro at length. 'Sounds like we're about done here, right?'

The look in the warden's eye was clear. _I say when we're done._

'Guards.'

In a flash, the guard near Yashiro hauled him out of the seat by the front of his jumpsuit and pushed him backwards onto the desk.

Doumeki lunged.

The second guard tried to restrain him, which Yashiro, even in his compromising position, found laughable. A single punch from Doumeki had him crouching on the floor, cradling his nose.

In fact, the only thing that could have stopped him, and did, was the sight of a gun being pressed down against Yashiro's temple.

From behind his desk where he'd barely moved a muscle, Shizuka glanced down at his injured guard with a look of bored contempt. He then flicked his eyes up to Doumeki who was frozen in the middle of the room.

'You can either leave,' said the warden, suddenly sounding almost tired, as he got to his feet. 'Or you can stay and watch.'

 _Time Number 7,_ said an evil voice in Doumeki's head.

Still holding the barrel firmly against Yashiro's face, the guard stepped aside to allow the warden to pass around the side of the table.

Yashiro barely even registered Shizuka's approach.

'Doumeki.'

Yashiro's face was one of calm, stoic resolve; Doumeki's one of desperate fury.

 _Good_ , Yashiro sent him silently. _Use that._

'Listen to me carefully,' he said, holding Doumeki in his gaze. 'If he tries anything, I want you to kill him.'

The words were enough to make Shizuka pause. He let out an incredulous laugh.

'Do you understand?' Yashiro said again as though the warden wasn't even there. His voice wasn't loud but it cut right to Doumeki's core. 'Even if it means they'll pull the trigger and you get to watch me die. If the warden takes another step towards me, you're going to go for his throat. Is that clear?'

Doumeki took in unsteady breaths. Boss' words filled his head.

'Is that cl –?'

'Yes, Boss.'

Yashiro smiled.

At last, Doumeki broke their gaze and fixed the warden with a new look.

Shizuka, who had been so sure of so much only a few seconds ago, now felt like he'd stepped out of his office onto a different planet. He lost his sense of direction.

He tried to be rational.

Like the time in the cell, the gun was an idle threat. Sure, there would be less paperwork if he shot an inmate in his office ('He burst in and threatened me, Your Honour!') but there would still be paperwork.

And so the gun to the pervert's head was a bluff. And the pervert was calling him on the bluff. That's all that was happening.

And yet, when he braved another glance at the towering cellmate whose eyes spelled death, he forgot his rationalisations again. Under that glare, Shizuka almost believed the guy would actually risk the pervert's life and his own life just to… how had it been put? Go for Shizuka's throat.

He swallowed.

He sweated.

Even though Yashiro wanted his big idiot to be the last thing he saw, he caved to instinct and squeezed his eyes shut.

In the end, Shizuka himself took the gun out of the guard's hand.

'Just get out,' he said, sounding tired again.

Yashiro opened his eyes. Such an anticlimax.

He almost felt sorry for the guy.

* * *

Night had fallen and the sparrows were long gone.

Back in their cell, Yashiro sat up on the futon with Doumeki's head in his lap. Doumeki was almost asleep and he surrendered to the feeling of Boss' fingers running along his jaw and ears.

'You did well today.'

At that, Doumeki had to look up. Boss had never once said anything like that to him.

'You would have done it, right?' Yashiro's eyes watched him closely. There was no escaping them. 'You would have tried to stop them, even if it meant they shot me?'

The only way Doumeki could answer was by remembering what had gone through his mind; the flash of understanding that had passed between himself and Boss in the warden's office.

Doumeki knew what it would have meant. Whether right there on the spot or slowly over the course of years, it would have meant the end of him. It would, in all likelihood, have made him consider the option of following him. But yes. He had been ready to do it.

He nodded. Boss seemed pleased.

* * *

No room for demons in a prison cell. Barely room for much except this; pulling one another from the edge of crevasses that opened without much warning.

But, Doumeki reflected, there was just enough room for other things as well.

He'd finally learned the name of the first song he'd ever heard Boss humming.

There was a specific look in Boss' eye right before he reached for Doumeki's cock; a look that was only slightly different from the one that meant he was about to crack one of his ridiculous jokes. But Doumeki had learned the difference.

His palms had memorised the shape of Boss' legs just above the knee. ('Hey, didn't you tell me you like people with lovely legs?' '…Yes.' 'Does that mean you think I have lovely legs?' '…Yes.' 'Pffffft. Idiot.')

He had carved himself into Boss more times than he could count.

No room for demons. Only room enough for them.

That night, after their stand-off with a warden who was like a soulless Misumi, Doumeki lay in Boss' lap and faced up to the unlikely, unhealthy truth of something he'd been keeping at bay for months.

A few hours later, head still in lap, hand still on face, they fell asleep.

Yashiro awoke first the following morning. He let Doumeki's head slide to the futon and got up to take a piss. He tried to remember what life was like in the days before he and Doumeki had to relieve themselves in front of each other. He smiled, wondering if they would ever really be able to adjust to that life again.

At that moment, glancing over the small wooden partition at Doumeki, Yashiro faced up to the unlikely, unhealthy truth of something he'd been keeping at bay for several months. He didn't know Doumeki had had an identical moment the previous night.

* * *

So, Yashiro and Doumeki spent three years together in a cramped two-person cell.

And those years turned out to be the best of their lives.

 _Shame though,_ Yashiro realised with a half-smile the day he took a long morning piss and watched Doumeki's large body curled up on the futon. _How neither_ _of us will ever actually admit it._

* * *

 ** _*Author's note:_** _Reference to a scene in_ Careful Now _where Doumeki overhears Yashiro say, 'He's stronger than anyone else I've known. Strange, isn't it?'_


	3. Why Me?

_Minimal sex, a bit of fluff, plenty of angst._

* * *

The Stepfather showed up one day without any warning.

By then, Doumeki had been unofficially living at Boss' place for months (though Yashiro, of course, had been careful to suggest the move only in terms of the convenience of having his bodyguard with him 24/7). And so Doumeki had been the one to open the door when the bell rang.

Early seventies. Concave posture, white hair, small eyes, asymmetrical gash of a mouth.

'Who the fuck are you?'

A voice like gravel. The old man squinted up at Doumeki, who was too taken aback to answer.

Yashiro eventually drew up to the front door, drying his hair. When he saw the visitor, his careless smile evaporated. Doumeki tried and failed to identify the look on Boss' face. He'd never seen it before.

'Still a little fucking brat, I see. Letting guests freeze to death on your front step without inviting them in.'

Boss was pale. With a shadow over his eyes. His eyes themselves were slightly wider, looking without seeing, as though they were somewhere in the past. Doumeki immediately wanted to slam the door in the stranger's face.

But Yashiro quietly invited him in.

Over the next few minutes, after hearing Boss use the word 'Ojisan' a few times, it finally clicked, though Doumeki didn't want to believe it.

The old man bellyached about his story. His last wife had just died and his adult stepchildren, the ungrateful fuckers, had kicked him out of the house before her body was even cold. So he had nowhere to go. And such was the state of his life that he had to go look up his first ever stepson, who was now a fucking Yakuza of all fucking things, in order to have a roof over his head. Unbelievable, he muttered. He helped himself to a bottle of sake from the pantry as Yashiro and Doumeki stood in the doorway.

Pulse hammering, Doumeki looked at Boss. It would take just two steps, maybe three, a quick snap of the neck, and he would be lying dead on the kitchen floor. He waited for a signal of some kind.

To his shock and dismay, still in a voice that was unlike anything Doumeki had heard, Yashiro said he'd fix up the guest bedroom.

Doumeki could only watch helplessly as The Stepfather stayed in the apartment for the next three days.

Yashiro bore the endless tirade of verbal abuse without so much as a flinch. He even found the heart to joke at the old man once or twice, though these were never taken well. The light had gone from his face. He could barely look Doumeki in the eye. And of course, he refused to talk about it.

It was all Doumeki could do not to kill the old man in his sleep.

He couldn't understand. Perhaps Boss had a plan. But the only thing Doumeki could wrangle out of him one morning as they dressed for work was, 'He's just an old man now.'

His voice again didn't sound anything like him. And Doumeki couldn't help but notice that Boss hadn't touched him once since the man showed up.

He was amazed to discover there was someone he hated more than his own father.

* * *

In the end there was no big, bittersweet resolution. No explosive confrontations, no confessions, no blood, no death. Doumeki didn't get to kill the man who had ruined his boss' life.

All that happened was a single line, 'How many Yakuza cocks did you get stuffed with before they made you leader of anything?' and suddenly Doumeki had seized the frail old man by the collar, walked him to the front door and flung him into the hallway. It wasn't even the worst insult he'd had to withstand over the past three days. But something in him had snapped.

'Doumeki!'

Yashiro pushed him aside and went into the hallway where the old man was struggling to get back to his feet, both hands holding his left hip, tears streaming.

'The fucker broke my hip,' he gasped. Doumeki never found out if he actually did or not, but he hoped to God it hurt.

'Ojisan –'

The old man spat at Yashiro's feet. A little landed on his socked toe. With that, he hobbled, still sobbing and moaning, down the hallway and out of sight. He didn't come back.

Yashiro didn't speak to Doumeki for a few days.

* * *

One evening, Doumeki came home from the supermarket to find Yashiro naked, gagged and cuffed to the radiator. When, in a panic, he removed the gag, Yashiro told him with a sly smile that he'd done it to himself and had been waiting for hours. He told Doumeki to do things to him that he'd never done before.

Doumeki realised too late that it was again about the stepfather.

* * *

Over the next week or so, Doumeki became both a lawyer and a psychiatrist. The statute of limitations on rape and child abuse had run out decades ago, he discovered, his head buried in complex legal jargon. But there were other ways to make sure the world knew what he did. A quiet death didn't seem fair.

Then he became psychiatrist Doumeki, now buried in page after page of smartphone research that might help him understand Yashiro's behaviour. Some things seemed so obvious he kicked himself for not realising it sooner.

Victims of child sex abuse either curl into themselves or explode outwards. The first kind struggle to accept what happened while the second kind accept it wholeheartedly as a defence mechanism and use the rest of their lives to strengthen this self-defence. When faced with their attackers, they empathised. They felt powerless and almost guilty.

It sounded like Yashiro. Then again, it didn't. Trying to slap a label on him didn't feel right.

Of course, Doumeki's research ended in a whole lot of nothing. There was no way he could bring up legal or psychological jargon. He could barely bring up any kind of words at all, even on a good day.

Because living with Yashiro had, only recently, become like clinging to a wooden raft in an ocean storm.

Doumeki would sometimes be made to sleep on the couch. Other times, he'd be kicked out of the apartment entirely. Sometimes he'd be yelled at for sleeping on the couch and dragged back to bed for hours of sex. There were days Yashiro didn't speak to him and other days he'd nap with his head on Doumeki's thigh, looking almost peaceful.

The sex got rougher and rougher. And Doumeki was swept along; a sailor clinging to the mast. Until Yashiro was buckled and bruised and gasping on the bed. Or floor. Or kitchen counter.

Doumeki got the sense it couldn't last much longer.

* * *

They'd just had sex and Yashiro, having recovered his breath, turned his back on him. Doumeki sensed that the storm had passed for now and felt the loneliness of being stranded.

'Should I… go to the couch?'

'Do whatever you want.'

His tone was quiet and tired more than cold. Still, Doumeki felt it cut through him. He settled back and tried to sleep.

After a while, Yashiro heard him snoring softly. The wall ahead of him was the blue-black of night. He stared at it for a long time.

He'd seen it. He'd watched, as though from above, everything he said and did in his stepfather's presence. He'd been disgusted with himself enough that he could have thrown up. What Doumeki must think of him.

Something about the colour of that wall and the feeling of that room and the silence of the apartment in general brought back someone he'd believed to be long gone. A character in a book he'd read years ago. A fifteen year old sitting on his windowsill, facing a quiet, dark room. The tears hurtled through the decades and found him. They soaked the pillow beneath his cheek.

Twenty years of holding back angst, Yashiro thought, furious with himself. All for this.

When it threatened to take hold of his chest, he started to get up slowly, regretting that he hadn't made Doumeki sleep on the couch.

Just as he started to climb out of bed, he heard Doumeki stir. A hand closed on his arm.

'Let go,' he said. His voice shook only a little through his tears.

Doumeki pulled him back, his own pulse racing.

'I'm not kidding. Get off me, now.'

And so on. Perhaps he would have had a fighting chance if his other arm was in working condition. At some point, he did manage to shove his foot somewhere into Doumeki's torso, not that he seemed to feel it in the slightest. In the end, Doumeki was simply too strong.

Yashiro's back was pressed against his chest. Huge, heavy arms with all the force of a straightjacket, steady breaths on the back of his neck. Not a single word was uttered.

Fifteen years old again, he cried and cried. But this time, someone watched.

* * *

A few subtle changes that night.

The first was that Yashiro's tears subsided and he fell asleep, though he couldn't be sure which came first. _I'm such a fucking tragedy_ , he thought, almost humorously, right before he drifted off.

He also thought, _Let go already, you moron._

The second change was when Yashiro awoke again a few hours later, close to dawn. He felt drained. Doumeki's arms were still doing their best impersonation of a straightjacket. He turned his head.

Doumeki was awake.

Yashiro was a little startled. There was a chance, of course, that Doumeki had also just woken up. But something told Yashiro the man had simply never closed his eyes.

 _Idiot._

The third subtle change was when he turned fully, feeling Doumeki's embrace loosen just a little, and fell asleep again with his head against his chest. _I'm such a fucking cliché,_ he thought before he drifted off, with a great deal of humour that time.

* * *

When he opened his eyes in the morning, sure enough Doumeki was still wide awake.

'Doumeki, for God's sake. Did you sleep at all?'

A wave of relief. It sounded almost like Boss again. Doumeki finally relaxed enough to unfold his arms. Yashiro lay back against the pillow, eyes somewhere on Doumeki's chin. A familiar half-smile.

Tokyo gradually came to life beyond the window. Slow rushes of sound, one after the other, gathering momentum.

The minutes lengthened. Doumeki had resolved to wait until Boss spoke first but, after hesitating, he opened his mouth.

'Do you want to talk about it, Boss?'

The words sounded even stupider out loud than they did in his head. But Doumeki was relieved he'd said them because they made Boss smile for the first time in days.

'I'm talking to psychiatrist Doumeki now, am I?' As he spoke, he was surprised to find there was nothing left. No fear or anger or desire to flee. 'Let's see, so there's bodyguard Doumeki, doormat Doumeki, sadist Doumeki, homicidally jealous Doumeki… am I missing anyone?'

Doumeki kept staring. Always that look, Yashiro thought. Expressionless and intense at the same time.

'You'll burn a hole through me,' he said lightly.

The words were a prelude to something. Doumeki heard it. He saw Yashiro's gaze fall away.

For his part, Yashiro couldn't believe what he was about to say.

'Why me?'

His voice was so low and flat that Doumeki barely heard him.

 _Why put up with all this?_

Yashiro raised tired eyebrows. 'And for the love of God, don't say anything about my hair, or that I'm beautiful.'

There was a long silence.

Doumeki struggled. There were many different versions of him, sure. But wordsmith Doumeki was almost definitely not among them. He would have quailed and refused to speak if he hadn't known how important this was.

'You – I've… never met anyone like you,' he began uncertainly, feeling the weight of the spotlight. 'You're…' How to capture Boss in something as limiting as language? It seemed impossible. 'You're unpredictable.'

He tried to relax by summoning a happier time. Boss' hair in the sun as they lay on a beach. A little pink spade.

'How you talk and move. And think. It's like... it's like you come from somewhere else.' He paused. 'Somewhere better than here.'

Yashiro again found himself trying to hold back tears.

He waited, but it seemed like Doumeki had run out of words. They weren't bad though, Yashiro thought numbly.

He was suddenly struggling to come to terms with the fact that the same world, the one small, blue world, could have both his stepfather and Doumeki on it.

'Also you're beautiful,' Doumeki said suddenly, like he couldn't help himself.

Yashiro laughed, almost relieved.

'That won't last,' he warned.

 _It will_ , Doumeki almost said aloud. He played that laugh in his mind, wanting to capture it and bottle it. He wasn't sure what he'd done, but somehow Boss was back. It felt something like a raft nudging into a sandy shore.

* * *

Yashiro's hand was on his cock again. Doumeki had already come twice the night before but he was standing to attention in no time.

And there was Boss climbing on top of him, lowering himself slowly on his cock, braced backwards on Doumeki's thigh. Doumeki groaned and firmly took hold of Boss' hips, pulling him down with every thrust up.

A few minutes later, while certainly not unhappy, Yashiro felt a familiar frustration. Sure, Doumeki's cock was fantastic. Probably his favourite cock of all time. But if he was going to come, he'd need a lot more. A lot worse.

Doumeki recognised the look in Boss' eye. He sat up and flipped them over, pushing in as deep as he could go. He felt his climax rushing up to meet him. He paused, head on Yashiro's chest, and tried to draw himself away from the edge.

'Do something,' Yashiro moaned from beneath him. 'Hit me. Pull my hair.'

Doumeki panted. If he did anything of the sort, he would come immediately. So he started moving slowly. Excruciatingly slowly. He held down Yashiro's good hand so he couldn't provoke him into doing anything more.

They fucked like that for ages. For far too long, Yashiro thought in consternation, eyes glazed and staring into Doumeki's.

For far too…

And then, from out of nowhere, Yashiro came.

* * *

The look of shock stayed on Doumeki's face right through breakfast. Yashiro would have found it amusing if he hadn't been so unsettled himself.

The waffles were a good distraction. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had such a ravenous appetite. He kept sending Doumeki back to the kitchen for more and inhaled them in seconds.

Finally, when he was full to bursting, he sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. Doumeki took a while longer to finish (and he only got through about half of what Boss had eaten).

Still leaning back, stuffed and happy, Yashiro opened an eye.

'Thank you,' he said. 'For breakfast. Really hit the spot.'

Doumeki, who had never in his life been thanked by his boss, looked like he'd just been pushed off a cliff. Yashiro laughed out loud. He decided he wanted to keep that expression on his face a while longer.

'Here, give me your plate. I'll do the washing up. As a proper thank you.'

None of the many versions of Doumeki knew what to do when Boss got up, piled their plates one on top of the other and headed for the kitchen, humming to himself.

'Can you grab your coffee cup though? Hard to do all this one-handed.'

Cup in hand, Doumeki dumbly followed him into the kitchen. The thought occurred to him that this was yet another stage of trauma or grief. He tried to filter through all his psychiatric research.

'Boss,' he said finally. 'Maybe we should go see Kageyama.'

'What? Why?'

'Are you… are you feeling okay?'

Yashiro sniggered as he turned the water on.

'Kageyama's not a psychiatrist, as he keeps reminding me. Plus, I'm fine, you idiot.'

Doumeki blinked, trying to summarise the past few hours. All he could come up with was:

'But you came. You finished from... from normal sex.'

Still smiling, Yashiro turned. Just for a few seconds, he let himself get pulled into the way Doumeki looked at him.

 _It's like you come from somewhere else_ , that look said. _Somewhere better than here_.

He felt a rush of emotion that he masked by taking Doumeki's cup from him and turning back to the sink.

'Yeah, let's not make a habit out of that.'


	4. A Threeway with Ryuuzaki

_Minimal angst, minimal fluff, a LOT of sex._

 _Once upon a time, when I finished writing_ Careful Now _, I told a certain amazing Spaniard that I would write up this threeway once I got enough sleep. Two months of sleep later, here it is!_

* * *

You've just landed a job as a temp in Shinseikai Enterprises. Congratulations!

You smooth your skirt and blouse in the elevator, excited about your first day. Your hair's looking pretty good too; not a bad day for it to choose to behave. Heels just the right height. Everything in top condition, you think guiltily, in case your beautiful boss happens to walk past your cubicle and you get to introduce yourself.

The boss. Oh, the boss.

You remember how you glimpsed him briefly as you waited and sweated before your interview. That entrancing gold hair and impeccable vest and suit and that walk and those ridiculously mellow _I-secretly-rule-the-world_ eyes and –

Okay, stop.

It was pathetic enough how disappointed you were when he didn't end up interviewing you himself. And it was pathetic enough how high you jumped for joy when you found out you got the job (an enthusiasm that had nothing to do with dental cover or overtime).

The man is most likely married, you remind yourself with a self-conscious flush. And you are not about to be the pitiful secretary that gets banged on the side.

So just keep it together, okay?

Okay.

The elevator doors slide open and you step out. A quick glance tells you he's not there. You find your supervisor who promptly seats you in your cubicle before a mountain of paperwork.

You sigh and get started.

* * *

The work is tedious but bearable. Nothing you haven't done before. And then, after only an hour or so, your supervisor is there again.

'The boss wants you to bring the Obayashi files over. Do you know where his office is?'

'Yes, sir!' you say, trying to disguise the fact that happiness just burst like a spring in a mountainside.

You fix your hair and blouse one last time, gather all eight of the hefty binders together in a stack and carry them down the various hallways.

Your first clue should have been the strange muffled noises. But your excitement and nervousness are so great that you ignore it.

You knock on the door and open it.

'Excuse me, Yashiro-san?'

And your files clatter to the floor.

* * *

The boss is spreadeagled on the couch, full to the brim with cock.

On one end, there's the very tall guy you saw with him the day you went in for your interview. The one with the serious face that scared you a little. He's got his cock way deep in the boss' ass, arms planted on either side of him on the couch.

On the other end, his cock way deep in boss' mouth, there's a slightly older guy you've never seen before, moustache and goatee and an expression that's even angrier than the first guy's.

In fact the only expression that isn't angry or intense in that moment is the boss'. He looks like he's on Cloud 9 and, amazingly, when Angry Guy Number 2's cock falls out of his mouth, the boss even gives you a smile.

'You must be the new temp,' he says breathily. His eyes land on the mess of files around your feet. 'Oh, the Obayashi files, I've been – _ah!_ ' (An accidental shove of the first guy's hips) '– expecting them. Go ahead and leave them on my desk.'

You manage to squeak, 'On your –?'

Your eyes travel across the suddenly massive expanse between the door and the desk on the other side of the room. No matter what route you chart, it would take you past the… past all the… past what was happening.

Having considered all possible courses of action, you wisely decide on the following: standing there and staring like a moron.

'Yashiro, for fuck's sake,' the second man says in a breathy undertone. You notice that he seems to be blushing. The first man, however, still balls-deep in your boss, seems to be focusing on remaining still. 'Just tell her to come back later.'

'No need,' the boss replies, flashing you another kind smile. 'She seems like she can handle it. Plus it's better she knows now what she might have to deal with in future.'

At this, the very tall guy glances up at him, looking almost upset.

The boss notices and laughs.

'Not _this_ as in the three of us, Doumeki.' He looks at you again and even rolls his eyes. 'How insecure is he? But in all honesty, you should know, there's a very big chance you'll be walking in on us. Just me and him. A lot. Think you can handle that?

Being asked a direct question jolts you back to reality. You blush to your roots and try to gather all the files together.

As you stack them again in your arms, you hear the boss say to one of them, 'Have you forgotten how to fuck? Keep going!'

Your ears ring.

'But... Boss –'

'Just do it!'

His voice is like honey.

And then he moans out loud. And again. And the sound of slapping fills your ears. The tall guy grunting. The boss still moaning.

'Fuck! Oh fuck, yes. Doumeki!'

Every instinct is telling you to flee. And yet –

 _Go ahead and leave them on my desk._

His voice, you reflect, was also like honey when he spoke to you. And so, feeling like a victim and a pervert and a moron all at once, and still very much in denial, you hug the files to your chest and cross the room. When you draw up alongside the couch, you make sure your gaze is dutifully trained on the carpet in front of you and nowhere else.

You still manage to notice a few details that escaped you earlier. How they're all still almost fully clothed. How the boss' pants are completely off but he's still wearing his shirt. How the boss' hands are tied in front of him with a tie. And how the first guy has a belt clutched in his hand.

 _Please don't use that while I'm here_ , is your single, highly irrational thought.

Between his high-strung cries, the boss manages to say something.

'You too, Ryuuzaki! Come on.'

'No way,' you hear the second guy mutter. As you finally put the files on the desk, you can feel his eyes on you. 'Not until she's gone.'

'Don't be a – _ugh! oh, fuck_ – spoilsport! Why do you always – _ah!_ – run for the hills when – _nngh_ – when someone comes to watch?'

'Not everyone gets off on being watched!'

'Oh, come on! _Ah!_ '

'No!'

You feel a rush of gratitude for the second man with the angry face and the goatee. But you still avoid his eye and everyone else's eye when you cross the office at light speed and finally reach the door.

'Thank you, miss!' the boss tells you, again between moans. 'And welcome – _ah_ – to the company!'

'Thank you, sir,' you manage to say, even though your voice sounds like a petrified child's.

His smile, suave even in those circumstances, stays with you after you close the door. You stand there in the hallway for a beat or two. Eyes wide. Heart pounding.

And then you hurry away when you hear the sound of someone getting whipped by the business end of a belt.

* * *

After the door closed, Ryuuzaki wasted no time shoving the full length of his cock back into Yashiro's throat.

That was also the same moment that Doumeki raised the hand holding the belt and lashed the side of Yashiro's ass.

A tandem move that resulted in Yashiro very nearly biting Ryuuzaki's dick in half.

' _Fuck!_ Yashiro, you idiot!'

Blinking through stars, Ryuuzaki pulled out. After a few throbbing seconds, he was relieved to see there was no damage done and that, given the circumstances, Yashiro had held back to an impressive degree. Yashiro even flashed him an apologetic grin.

Doumeki was still ramming into him, sweat gathering on his face and neck. Ryuuzaki watched, as though hypnotised, how deeply Yashiro was taking his cock. It reminded him quite powerfully how a younger Yashiro had been stretched on the floor of the mah-jong parlour, already covered in come, with five or six guys including Ryuuzaki taking turns.

This was a modern-day rehashing of that scene, sure. But there was something different about it.

For one thing, they were in Yashiro's own lavishly decorated office. And Yashiro himself had somehow managed to coax his homicidally protective guard dog into allowing Ryuuzaki to take part in this threesome.

But there was something else here that made it different.

Something about the way Doumeki looked at him. And the way Yashiro, occasionally, returned that look.

Unsure how he felt about this thought, a thought that seemed far too introspective for him, Ryuuzaki angrily shoved his cock back in.

'Don't you fucking bite it again,' he warned, feeling the warmth and wetness of Yashiro's mouth envelop his cock. 'No matter how badly he whips you. You hear me?'

Yashiro opened his throat wide and took him as deep as he could, tears gathering, and tried to communicate a yes.

Doumeki clenched his teeth at the sight of someone else's cock being pushed in and out of Boss' mouth. He didn't know why it made him even harder than he already was. Why it made his balls tighten in that familiar way.

They had a history together, Boss and Ryuuzaki. Boss had been fucked by Ryuuzaki while Doumeki was still a teenager. And yet, in place of jealousy, or rather _in addition to_ jealousy…

He didn't know how, but Boss had worked his magic on him again. And Doumeki suspected he was well on the way to having the best sex of his life.

* * *

They spit roasted him on his back for a long time. Yashiro felt the heat and relentlessness of both their cocks and realised he could die right there and die happy. His muffled cries fuelled them both and their cocks plunged as far as they could, almost trying to outdo the other.

Occasionally, even with his face full of Ryuuzaki, Yashiro would throw Doumeki a look he knew well and Doumeki would channel the part of himself he would always have preferred to keep dormant, raise his hand and whip him with the belt again. Usually on the side of his ass or thigh. He would feel the mark it made, and the ensuing cry from Boss, somewhere in his cock.

Once, when Yashiro begged him, he brought the buckle down across his abdomen. But the way that Boss twitched and buckled was enough for him to never do it again, no matter how much Boss claimed to have enjoyed it.

He would occasionally lean forwards and thrust his tongue into Boss' mouth, forcing Boss' head back against the couch, and Ryuuzaki would have to huff and wait for him to become available again.

* * *

They, Doumeki and Ryuuzaki that is, tried as much as humanly possible to avoid each other's eye.

And yet, whenever their eyes did meet, the moment was charged and electric and made things happen.

For instance, when they next glanced at each other over Yashiro's sweating, writhing form, it was like the decision was communicated telepathically. They both pulled out and Yashiro was left gasping and surprised. Doumeki spun him around and Ryuuzaki pulled him up until he was on his hands and knees.

Well, mostly knees, given the state of one of his bound hands. Doumeki watched him with concern.

'Is your arm okay, Boss?' he asked, his voice hoarse.

Yashiro shot him a look over his shoulder.

'Don't ruin the mood, idiot.'

'Sorry.'

And when Ryuuzaki grabbed his hair and guided his dick back into Yashiro's mouth, Doumeki pulled his ass cheeks apart and drove his cock in fully.

The sounds of slapping and grunting and muffled chokes filled the office. Ryuuzaki kept throwing anxious glances at the door, wondering how many more secretaries Yashiro had lined up just to indulge his love of voyeurism.

When he looked down, he was uncomfortable to find he was drawn into Yashiro's gaze. Eyebrows arched in pleasure but eyes that were somehow still half-lidded and mellow. He remembered the boy who had kneeled by the window with his head on the frame.

He then looked nervously up at Doumeki, hoping his little moment with Yashiro wasn't about to spell his own death.

Doumeki, luckily, was too busy clenching Yashiro's ass in both hands and pounding into him as hard as he damn well could.

For Ryuuzaki, the sight of Yashiro like that, the sounds, the feel of his tongue and the tightness of his throat around the tip of dick. It was all too much.

'I'm going to come,' he warned through gritted teeth.

At that Yashiro pulled off completely. Ryuuzaki felt the shock of cold air on his cock.

'Wait!' Yashiro gasped. 'Not yet.'

'What?'

'Just wait. Doumeki, stop.'

Very reluctantly, Doumeki grunted and obeyed. He pulled out. His eyes lingered on the pre-come that was dribbling out of Yashiro's hole and down his thigh.

Yashiro, the one who had had two cocks inside of him a moment ago, the one whose hands were still bound, managed to take complete control of the situation. He flicked his sweat-drenched hair out of his eyes and turned around to face Doumeki.

'Doumeki, sit.'

Ryuuzaki nearly snorted with laughter. Guard dog was right, he thought.

Numb, his cock still painfully stiff, Doumeki sat back on the couch, his eyes on his boss. Ryuuzaki watched, surprised not to feel that left out, as Yashiro swung a leg over Doumeki's lap and reached both of his bound hands through his legs. It proved a little difficult.

So Doumeki helped. He moved his cock until the head lined up with Yashiro's hole and then gripped his waist. He pushed Yashiro down onto his cock in one breath.

'Ah! Oh, fuck yes. Mm!' His voice was low and almost mournful. 'Deeper, Doumeki!'

And then Yashiro actually leaned forwards and kissed him.

Choosing that moment of all moments to turn red, Ryuuzaki tried to look at something else. He certainly felt left out now. Was this why Yashiro had brought him back from the brink of coming? If not for the state of his cock, he would have considered leaving.

Yashiro seemed to pick up on his frustration. He turned his head.

'Get over here.'

Ryuuzaki let out an annoyed grunt. It was next to impossible to say no to him when he used that voice.

As he watched Yashiro ride Doumeki's cock, Ryuuzaki felt the sudden need to see more of his skin. So he came up behind him, reached around his chest and tore his shirt off, paying no mind to the buttons that fell away.

As Boss' bare chest was revealed to him, Doumeki bent down and bit his nipple hard. He savoured the sharp cry.

Yashiro laughed.

'Did you give him notes, Ryuuzaki?' He craned his neck to look at him. 'Doumeki bites my nipples just as hard as you do now.'

He then leaned forwards until his chin was pressed against Doumeki's forehead. And, although it was still full of Doumeki's cock, he tried to push his ass out.

'Hurry up,' he gasped to Ryuuzaki.

Ryuuzaki blinked. He stared at where Doumeki's cock was still thrusting.

'What?' he said thickly.

Yashiro clicked his tongue in frustration.

'Put it in already.'

After a few more lines of stilted dialogue, it finally dawned on both Ryuuzaki and Doumeki what he meant.

Again, their eyes met over Yashiro's shoulder.

* * *

For long months, since Doumeki had started fucking Yashiro, no one else had fucked Yashiro. It was common knowledge at that point that, if anyone tried, they would be a pile of bones and flesh at the bottom of a skyscraper.

So Ryuuzaki was again understandably nervous about the bodyguard's possible reaction. Not to mention his latent fear that Yashiro, for all his proclivities, wouldn't be able to handle having two cocks in his ass at once.

But the look that Doumeki shot him was complex. As complex a look as a man could muster while he's fucking someone. At the very least, it wasn't an obvious warning. Ryuuzaki's pulse hammered in his ears. His gaze, oddly, never left Doumeki's.

And he moved his cock to Yashiro's hole.

* * *

It seemed impossible to everyone but Yashiro. After grunts, heavy breathing and loud moans, Ryuuzaki finally inched his head through. Yashiro, even through his own pleasure and pain, watched the muscles on Doumeki's neck strain with the new sensation.

He almost shivered with anticipation. With the thought that he would soon be impaled on both cocks. That they would be thrusting in tandem and both would, perhaps, if he was lucky, come inside him at the same time.

'A little more,' he goaded them both. 'Come on.'

And finally, trying his damndest to ignore the fact that his cock was pressing as close as it possibly could to another man's cock, Ryuuzaki was lodged deep inside Yashiro.

Yashiro gasped and panted and moaned. His words were no longer the enticing prose of dirty talk. They were an incoherent babble. And they devolved even more when both cocks started moving.

At first they both took turns thrusting. Which meant, essentially, that every move for Yashiro was a thrust in.

'Fffff – mm! Ye – ah! Ugh!'

He barely had the chance to breathe in.

The incredible friction and tightness being something new for them as well, Doumeki and Ryuuzaki concentrated. The sights and sounds of Yashiro between them was proving a distraction. When they found their rhythm, they started thrusting in, both at once.

By that point, Yashiro could only hold on to Doumeki's neck. Doumeki heard his cries in his ear.

Amazingly, despite everything that was being done to him, a familiar part of Yashiro was suddenly craving for something else.

Haze of pleasure, yes. Flashes of pain, yes. But only flashes.

He needed more.

* * *

So he said to Doumeki, in an urgent whisper, 'Your tie!'

Doumeki looked at him.

'What?'

'Your tie. Take it off. Put it around my neck.'

'Boss –'

Yashiro heard his reluctance and ran right over it.

'Do it. Now!'

Doumeki robotically slid his tie from around his collar and looped it around Boss'. He'd leaned back and Doumeki saw that familiar glint in his eye. The masochistic one that brought out the sadist in him in all of its terrible glory.

Ryuuzaki wondered what the fuck was happening.

He kept wondering even when Doumeki tightened the tie around Yashiro's neck, just under his jaw. And pulled.

Yashiro choked.

' _What the fuck are you doing?_ '

He almost pulled out. Almost.

But a few things stopped him.

In order, it was **1:** the feeling of being inside Yashiro, **2:** how amazingly close he was to coming, and **3:** the strange, hot flare of lust that sparked after seeing Yashiro arch his back like that.

Yashiro was entirely at Ryuuzaki's mercy. At Doumeki's mercy. They could do whatever the hell they wanted to him, Ryuuzaki realised, and he would have to take it.

And so when he met Doumeki's eye again, when he took the tie in hand and pulled, when the strangled sound that came out of Yashiro made him shudder and come deep inside him, he realised that he had in that moment been turned into something of a sadist. Or at least earned a few more badges.

He felt Doumeki come as well, bucking and grunting.

* * *

Fuck you, Yashiro, Ryuuzaki thought angrily. Only you. Only you could do this to a man. To two straight men, no less.

As he and Doumeki rode out their climaxes and tried to feel their way back down, Yashiro fell against Doumeki's shoulder.

Even through the fog of mind-numbing pleasure, Ryuuzaki noticed something was wrong.

It occurred to him that he hadn't felt Yashiro's ass clenching and convulsing around his cock like it usually did before he came. He wondered if he had come at all.

And then he noticed, his anxiety mounting, that Yashiro hadn't said anything even when the tie fell limply out of Ryuuzaki's hand. There was no breathy laugh, no witty one-liner. He had just flopped.

'Yashiro?'

He lay still.

Doumeki noticed it too.

'Boss?' he said, his voice still hoarse with lust.

He lifted Yashiro from his shoulder. Gold hair stuck to his forehead. His eyes were closed and his mouth slack.

Doumeki's heart fell through the floor.

 _'Boss!'_

* * *

The nylon burn stood out damningly around his neck. They both immediately pulled out of Yashiro and lay him back on the couch. Doumeki held Yashiro's face in his hands, eyes wide with shock.

'Boss! Boss, wake up!'

No response. He lay there, his head tilted slightly, looking almost peaceful. He's so beautiful, Doumeki thought in desperation. He gripped his shoulders and shook him.

'Wake up!'

He was almost yelling. Yashiro remained still.

Ryuuzaki stood nearby, one hand in his hair.

'Shit!' he observed, his mind slowly gearing up to panic. 'Fuck. Oh, shit.'

He took a few steps away, his eyes still on Yashiro's limp form. How long had they choked him for? Seconds? Minutes? Had Yashiro even struggled?

Doumeki, meanwhile, refused to accept what had happened. Any minute now, Boss would wake up and smile. It was just a trick. Another of his cruel tricks.

His head was full of Boss' moans from only minutes ago. That look of total lust. The way water had trickled in braid-like rivulets down his back in the bath. The thought of Boss the first time he'd seen him, leaning against a wall in his suit and vest, lighting a cigarette.

He felt tears smart his eyes as he shook Yashiro's shoulders again, more insistently.

'Boss, wake up! Please!'

More than anything else, Ryuuzaki was deeply thrown by the sound of Doumeki's voice. Out of sheer anger that Yashiro would put them through something like this, he went back to the couch and shoved Doumeki aside.

He raised his hand and lashed Yashiro across the face with all his strength.

With a gasp, Yashiro blinked and opened his eyes fully. He wheezed and his hands, still bound, reached up to his throat. His eyes bulged for a few moments until he found his breath again.

Hovering above him, Doumeki panted and stared. After a lag, relief flooded his veins like a rich, molten liquid.

'What just happened?'

Yashiro's voice sounded constricted. Almost as though, Ryuuzaki thought, two idiots had strangled him with a tie until he passed out. He turned away, his face red with anger and relief.

* * *

Confused about a few things, including the fact that Doumeki had hung his head into his neck, Yashiro lifted his bound hands and touched his face gently.

Ryuuzaki didn't need to see this to know that his visit to the land of Yashiro and Doumeki was long over. He zipped up his fly and tried to straighten his clothes.

From over Doumeki's shoulder, Yashiro saw this.

'Where are you going?' he asked, his voice sounding marginally better. 'I haven't even come yet.'

This brought about a small pause. Doumeki lifted up and even Ryuuzaki turned around. Sure enough, there Yashiro was at full mast.

Ryuuzaki felt a strong, dangerous urge to laugh.

Amazingly, Yashiro's gaze had returned to its usual enticing half-lidded stare.

'Did I pass out?' Yashiro tried to remember but couldn't get past the unreal memory of two cocks plunging into him and the delicious thrill of the tie being tightened around his neck. 'That's a shame. It was just getting good, too. I wanted to feel you both come inside me.'

'We already did,' Ryuuzaki muttered, hearing the ridiculousness of his own words.

'Oh!'

Yashiro seemed pleasantly surprised. Doumeki was still staring at him as though making sure he was still there.

'Well, how about Round 2?' asked Yashiro, running his finger along Doumeki's scar again and then fixing Ryuuzaki with a familiar look. 'This time I'll blow you both and you can come on my face at the same time. What do you say?'

His voice was like honey, Ryuuzaki thought. It was so unfair.

And then he met Doumeki's eye one final time. The look there, this time, was different. It wasn't a warning, exactly. Not quite. It was something else.

A plea, almost.

Ryuuzaki understood it immediately. He was surprised to feel a strange blend of emotions.

 _I was there first, you know_ , he thought suddenly, entirely without his control. _I was there first. Where you are now._

Unaware of any of it, Yashiro waited for them to cave yet again. He may have ruined things by passing out prematurely the first time, but the second time was going to be –

'I'm out,' said Ryuuzaki simply. He ran a hand through his hair to straighten it. 'You two do whatever you want.'

Yashiro tried to protest. Doumeki lay there silently.

But Ryuuzaki turned and left. He was surprised that he couldn't quite bring himself to look at them again as he closed the door.

* * *

You're trying to fight the images of what you saw in the boss' office, even though you already suspect that they've been grafted permanently to your mind.

And suddenly, Angry Guy Number 2 comes striding through the cubicles towards the elevator. He looks slightly flushed.

Pulse hammering, you try your best to look away. It's no use; he catches your eye. He has to pass by your cubicle after all. It's almost a relief that he seems just as uncomfortable as you do.

He averts his gaze as he passes. You almost breathe out with relief.

Then he stops for a moment and turns back. Your heart rate suffers again.

'Keep an eye on those two, okay?' he says gruffly, catching you totally off guard. 'And, you know. Maybe keep a paramedic or two on standby.'

And then he's gone. The elevator dings closed after him.

* * *

The phone on your desk rings a few times before you notice it. You clear your throat, try with all of your might to push everything aside, and put on a smile.

'Hello, Shinseikai Enterprises,' you say, wondering where the hell you've ended up.

* * *

 _ **Author's note:** This scene was vaguely referenced at the end of my long, rambling story_ Careful Now.


	5. Yashiro and Doumeki Go to a Gay Club

_No angst, a tiny bit of fluff, and a fair amount of sex. Mostly, this piece is just in good fun. Enjoy! :)_

 _For best results, I recommend reading this while listening to 'No' by Meghan Trainor, which is what's playing in the club as our boys enter._

* * *

Everyone within eyeshot turned to them. And found they were unable to look away.

At that moment, the track changed. A scratchy, fifties-style female voice played over the speakers. It was a prelude, obviously, to something that would drop like a bomb into the twenty-first century.

But the drawn-out, old-school prelude had the effect of making the two new arrivals appear to glide through the crowd in slow-motion.

They both wore suits, which alone would have been enough to make them stand out in a sea of tight black tees and tank tops. On top of that, they were both gorgeous. Like they had just strolled off a full-page, black-and-white Armani ad.

The one in the black suit was especially stunning. Light hair that glinted in the occasional bursts of multi-coloured lights. Half-lidded eyes that roamed over any merchandise that met his standards without giving any indication that he would actually follow through. Even his sling managed to appear alluring. Every alpha in the club tuned their cross-hairs his way.

They were almost immediately put off by the guy behind him.

Grey suit, immense shoulders, expression like a Sphinx, he stood a head taller than everyone there. And he followed close behind the beautiful one as though they were tethered.

The men at the bar hoped they would head their way. The men who watched them from beneath strobe lights hoped that they would shed their suit jackets and looks of seriousness and join them on the dance floor.

Instead, the pair walked straight through the dance floor (Doumeki uncomfortable with the stares his boss was getting and impervious to those he drew himself, Yashiro aware of all of the above and loving every second of it) without once stopping.

They then disappeared behind a door marked 'Staff Only'.

* * *

All in all, Yashiro thought, their errand was pretty successful. Only the security guard lay on the floor bleeding. Only a few teeth were scattered on the carpet. The owner himself sat behind the desk, wide-eyed, watching as Doumeki calmly wiped his knuckles with a tissue.

Yashiro barely had to move or speak throughout the whole exchange. He was fairly confident no one would be dragging their asses on payments next time. He gave the owner a kindly grin before he and Doumeki walked back out into the club.

The same song was playing, Yashiro noticed, pleased with his and Doumeki's efficiency.

On the way back out, however, they had a little trouble wading through the dance floor. Their reappearance had sparked new confidence in some of the patrons, especially those with enough liquid courage to see past the suits and the seriousness.

The first one was tall. His light brown hair was swept casually to the side. A great pair of arms beneath a casual white T-shirt. Casual jeans, casual expression. If not for the glint in his eye and the way he honed in on Yashiro, he may not even have given himself away.

His head tilted down, his chest suddenly taking over Yashiro's field of vision, the guy was close enough that Yashiro could smell his cologne. It stirred a very particular breed of pheromones in Yashiro, despite knowing full well that it had been concocted in a lab to do exactly that.

And the guy's face wasn't bad, Yashiro thought. He enjoyed the combination of piercing gaze and casual smile. It was a refreshing change from Doumeki's piercing gaze and constant lack of smile.

He didn't get to enjoy it for long, however, because Doumeki had swiftly stepped between them, fists held firmly at his sides – so firmly it was like Doumeki had taken the precaution of welding them there, just to stop them from swinging into Mr Casual's casual smile.

Mr. Casual's casual smile stayed put but he held up his hands in defeat and was lost backwards in the crowd.

Yashiro grinned. He'd just thought up a fun game.

* * *

Next was Mr. Disbelief.

Whose disbelief was rather charming, actually, Yashiro thought. He had always enjoyed bringing about that look of utter incredulity in a man. Like Yashiro's attention was making him praise whatever deity was listening.

The guy's broad back was turned at first so, in order to ensure Doumeki stayed out of his line of sight for as long as possible, Yashiro nimbly sidestepped and turned, planting himself directly in front. Then, having cast an appraising glance at the strong neck and rock-hard pecs, he proceeded to tug him gently forwards by the front of his shirt.

Wide eyes, a slightly open mouth and a disbelieving grin. He tried to take hold of Yashiro's hips but Yashiro stepped tantalisingly out of reach.

Feeling the sweat gather on his neck, Yashiro slipped his suit jacket off and flung it over his victim's shoulder at Doumeki, partially obscuring his head and shoulders.

Timed too perfectly to be a mistake and yet bearing all the casual grace of someone who hadn't intended it, Yashiro then flicked his hair and spun around in perfect sync to the song's heavy drop.

He and Mr. Disbelief, whose look of incredulity stayed with him for their brief few moments together, managed to grind and sway and even sweat to the music before a firm yank backwards by his collar sent him away forever. Yashiro even waved.

* * *

The song promoted the use of the word 'no', but Yashiro had always abjured the word as a basic philosophy. Especially now, seeing how it had brought out bodyguard-Doumeki in all his glory. Only a few short steps away from homicidally-jealous-Doumeki, Yashiro thought, wondering how he might toe the line without pushing it too far. He ran a hand lightly along the shoulder of the next victim, one with a goatee that reminded him of Ryuuzaki, who looked down in happy surprise.

After Mr. Goatee, there was Mr. Cologne, Mr. Bulge, Mr. Suicidal (so called because he simply didn't seem to respond to Doumeki's silent threats and kept zooming back to Yashiro's side like a boomerang; only a fistful of his own shirt held in his face for several tense seconds made him back off permanently).

Yashiro's favourite had to be Mr. Tall Fierce German. Not only was he the only man in the club who was as tall as Doumeki, there was something about his glinting golden eyes, his square, solid jaw and vaguely anachronistic fashion sense that sent a spark through to all the right places in Yashiro's body. Plus the heavy language he whispered in Yashiro's ear when he drew close, one that meant absolutely nothing to him, ticked several more boxes.

That tan coat, Yashiro thought, is sexy as fuck.

Before he could reply in a language he was sure would mean just as little to him, he was approached by Mr. Lavish Praise.

'You,' he informed Yashiro drunkenly, 'are the hottest guy in this club by a mile. Heck, you're the hottest guy I've ever fucking _seen_. Where did you even come from?'

The newcomer's possessive stance and the fact that he was holding two drinks must have sent a strong message to Mr. Tall Fierce German, who flashed Yashiro an amiable wink in defeat and stepped away.

Yashiro felt a small tug of regret. He wouldn't have minded seeing a face-off between Doumeki and the big guy.

Instead, he turned to Mr. Lavish Praise for all of two seconds before Doumeki finally caught up and forced him to move hurriedly backwards, sloshing his drinks over his hands and feet.

* * *

The next ten minutes passed much the same way, with Doumeki finding new ways to keep guys away from Yashiro without resorting to violence while Yashiro kept mercilessly baiting more guys.

One noteworthy change from tradition came in the form of a beautiful young man who emerged from the shadows and stole the limelight.

He was shorter than Yashiro but rivalled him in that unique breed of feline beauty. Narrow eyes and enigmatic smile. Dark hair that fell into his eyes and a collared shirt rolled up at the sleeves and perhaps one too many buttons undone for it to have been an accident. Plus there was something in his walk and the way he lifted his chin with each downbeat. Irreverant. Entirely aware of his effect on men. If I had a younger brother, Yashiro thought.

And, just as he would expect of his own kin, he made a beeline for Doumeki.

When he got there, he wasted no time. He held Doumeki's forearms in both hands and pulled him away from Yashiro. His gentle touch and benign smile had the effect of stunning Doumeki enough that he didn't shift momentum in time. And suddenly, his hands were on Doumeki's face and he had rolled his hips against Doumeki's with each beat.

Yashiro laughed loudly and turned to his next, and final, victim of the night; Mr. Handsy. The most solidly built fellow yet, with a shaggy mane of hair and his narrow eyes flashing dangerously.

Much to Doumeki's consternation, the crowd poured in between him and Boss. He struggled to figure out how to extricate himself from the young man's grip without hurting him or intimidating him like he did the others, but he was at a loss. And his pursuer seemed to take the opportunity to turn and grind against him in a way that was proving, if not exactly a turn on, a very immediate distraction.

Meanwhile, Yashiro was enjoying a similar sort of contact with Mr. Handsy, who was in the process of living up to his name. Hands circled Yashiro's waist and tried to pull him close under the guise of grinding to the beat. When he tried to shrug them off, they slid down his thighs.

'Okay, that's enough,' Yashiro chided as he turned to face him, yelling to be heard over the top of the music.

Deaf or unresponsive, the guy looped his arms around Yashiro again, palming insistently against his lower back.

 _Where's that 'No' song when you need it?_ Yashiro thought, half-amused, half-worried. Worried, of course, on Mr. Handsy's behalf when Doumeki eventually found them.

Yashiro tried to push away with a hand on his chest but the guy tugged him back by his belt, an ingenious little move that made the front of their pants brush up against one another. Hands were on either side of Yashiro's face, going in for the kill.

'Hey!' Yashiro protested, ducking away just in time. 'I said that's enough!'

The incredulous smile on Yashiro's face must have belied his true feelings because Handsy's hands then shamelessly looped around and grabbed his ass in a firm, tight grip.

'Listen, buddy –'

But the guy didn't get a chance to listen. At that moment, Yashiro saw him glance over his shoulder (specifically, he saw him glance _up_ , which was a dead give-away). Doumeki, who had materialised behind Yashiro, grabbed Mr. Handsy's wrist in a grip that didn't seem excessive to the untrained eye but which promptly dropped the fellow to his knees on the crowded dance floor.

The dancers were too sloshed and the music too loud for them to hear his cry of pain. Doumeki stood perfectly still and continued to hold his wrist almost lovingly, his eyes giving nothing away.

Yashiro stepped back to watch him work, his head cocked to the side. The straight arm, the straight back, the straight look. Like there weren't waves of contempt coursing behind his poker face.

He laughed. The sound made Doumeki turn.

'Come on.'

Yashiro took his arm and pulled. They left Mr. Handsy struggling to get to his feet, cradling his wrist.

* * *

Everyone within eyeshot turned to them. And found they were unable to look away.

Yashiro had had to face an unimaginable set of obstacles in his life. From his traumatic childhood to his turbulent teen years to the daily challenges of life in the Yakuza.

And yet nothing so far had been more impossible than trying to get Doumeki to dance.

First, he tried to get Doumeki to grind against him from behind. He pulled Doumeki's arms around him, even sliding one of them beneath his sling so he would be trapped. Even with their closeness, it felt as though Yashiro was trying to seduce a lamppost.

He turned and flipped his hair back, pleased at the little glint in Doumeki's eye as he followed its movement. Multicoloured lights raced across his face and shoulders. Yashiro hooked his good arm around Doumeki's neck and tried to roll his chest and hips against him.

'Pretend you're fucking me,' he suggested kindly. 'Just upright and with clothes on and surrounded by other guys. And in time to the music.'

As he expected, his coaching had no effect. Still, he managed to enjoy himself. He enjoyed the music, the pleasant buzz from the few drinks his admirers had procured for him, the jealous stares of nearby dancers. And above all, the unwavering, toe-curling stare from Doumeki, whose universe again appeared to have narrowed down to just Yashiro.

Yashiro pulled him into a long, tongue-heavy kiss, bracing most of his weight around Doumeki's neck. He was pleased to finally feel him take the initiative. Huge, heavy arms wrapped around Yashiro's back, nearly lifting him off his feet, and Doumeki tilted his head to deepen the kiss. Yashiro cracked his eyes open to look at him.

Strobe lights exploded in a microcosmic chaos at that moment. Yashiro felt himself stiffen against Doumeki's hard body. Doumeki felt it too.

And suddenly they were barrelling through the dance floor, heading for the bathroom.

* * *

Little Yashiro, who had taken his rejection graciously enough, watched them walk past. He sighed and crossed his legs on the stool, sipping his drink.

From across the bar, he caught the yellow gaze of Mr. Tall Fierce German, who raised his beer and threw him a wink.

* * *

The line for both urinals and stalls had lengthened well into the hallway and even spilled out near the bar. And yet they breezed right past everyone and swung the bathroom door open, ignoring all protests. Doumeki's size was enough to quieten them.

At the far end of the bathroom was a large stall for disabled patrons. A perfectly ambulatory man was heading for the door, cigarette in his mouth.

Yashiro pulled Doumeki in that direction. They overtook the fellow and, just to add indult to injury, Yashiro plucked the cigarette from his lips.

'Hey!'

'What's the matter with you?' Yashiro said in a sing-song voice right before he and Doumeki disappeared behind the door. He took a single drag on the cigarette before flicking it to the floor. 'This is for the disabled! Don't you have any shame?'

The latch was heard locking into place.

* * *

'Fuck!'

Yashiro's pants were down around his ankles, his left knee was up on the easy-access bar along the wall and Doumeki's tongue was in his ass.

'Oh, shit! Yes! Get in deeper.'

He reached back and pushed Doumeki's head further into his ass cheeks. Doumeki lapped and prodded, occasionally pulling back to slide two of his fingers in deep, scissoring and pushing him open wide. He spat into the hole and relished the way it made Yashiro's entire body shudder.

Then he straightened, pushed Yashiro's face against the tiled wall and took his dripping cock in hand.

'Mmm, do it,' Yashiro ordered. 'Fuck me good, Doumeki.'

He plunged in, all the way, in one thrust.

' _Fuck,_ yes! Ah! Nngh!'

The full length of Doumeki's cock ploughed in and out of him as he was held fast against the wall. With his other hand, Doumeki took a handful of Boss' pale ass and squeezed as hard as he could. He released his flesh to see the imprints of his fingers and then delivered a merciless backhand to the same place.

Yashiro whimpered and sagged against the bar, the pain fuelling his climax, which was climbing further and further with every plunge of Doumeki's cock.

Normally, Doumeki had no problem concentrating on Boss while he was fucking him. It wasn't hard to do, after all, what with the gold hair that Boss tossed back when Doumeki thrust in particularly deep, and the sight of Yashiro squirming before him, his sultry voice begging for more.

But at that moment, there was a different charge in the air. He became slowly and uncomfortably aware that he was angry. That he was imagining the way the last guy had his hand on Boss' ass. How the one before had whispered something in his ear. How Boss had smiled and danced and flirted with each of them.

That was when Doumeki heard a thud come from somewhere on his left and above. He whipped his head around in time to see a head duck out of sight in the adjoining stall.

After a few seconds, he remembered, as though he had been yanked back to reality, the long line of men they had just stormed past. Men who could hear them as clearly as if they were in the stall too. Doumeki imagined them all with their sleazy eyes and grins, all getting turned on by the sound of his boss getting fucked. He imagined his boss loving the attention. He imagined his boss' ass clenching around his cock at the thought of being responsible for so many men getting off.

'Hey,' Yashiro called, still breathless, craning his neck to look behind him. 'What's the hold up?'

Doumeki pulled out of him without a word, making him gasp in frustration. He then hitched up his boss' trousers as well as his own and then wrenched the stall door open. Yashiro was surprised and even a little nervous about the strength of Doumeki's grip around his arm.

They powered through the club and out the front door. This time, the look on Doumeki's face kept absolutely everybody at arm's length.

* * *

The Lexus was parked in the alley right behind the club. The heavy beat of the music was still audible, as though it was an immense pulse they could feel through the walls and floor.

Doumeki opened the door and flung Yashiro onto the backseat.

In no time, Yashiro's pants were discarded again and Doumeki was again holding him face-down, with his bare ass in the air and Doumeki's cock pounding, hitting him deep, pushing out moans in more and more erratic rhythms.

After being fucked in that position for so long that he began developing a sharp pain in his neck, Doumeki flipped him over without warning, held a hand over his mouth and delved right back in.

When he lifted his hand from Yashiro's mouth, it was only so he could close his fist tightly, and painfully, on Yashiro's hair. Yashiro moaned. In response Doumeki nuzzled his jaw and neck softly, as though to soothe him, right before sinking his teeth into Yashiro's flesh.

Yashiro cried out and felt tears sting his eyes.

Doumeki reared back and stared at him, eyes unblinking, teeth clenched.

'Why are you… _uh_ … so… angry?'

The pace of Doumeki's thrusts was staggered somewhat by the unexpected question.

'Not that... I'm complaining,' Yashiro was quick to point out between pants. 'Just curious.'

Doumeki hesitated.

In the sudden silence, the bass beat of the club vibrated through the windows.

'All those… all those guys,' he muttered finally. 'In the club. And in the bathroom…'

And then Yashiro saw the jealousy, which he had fully intended to ignite, reach a place he hadn't intended. Somewhere behind Doumeki's eyes. In his newly averted gaze. It almost (almost) created a surge of guilt.

It went away in the nick of time and was replaced by a laugh that bubbled up from his chest.

'Moron,' he said. 'Of course there are other guys. There always will be.'

Doumeki made no response, but Yashiro saw him fall just a bit further. He clicked his tongue impatiently.

'But there's only you,' he explained. 'Don't you get it?'

From the startled look and the blinks, it was clear that he didn't. Yashiro sighed.

'It's been only you for... for... since… well, for a long time,' he said, his tone now carrying a hard edge of impatience. 'You knew that, right?'

'I –'

'For God's sake, even when there's another man's cock inside me at the same time as yours,' said Yashiro, the hard edge now gone and a wide smile in its place at the memory of Ryuuzaki. 'It's still only you.'

Doumeki stared.

Yashiro rolled his eyes.

'Idiot,' he clarified.

Doumeki felt floored. And importunate. And inadequate. And blustering and immature and foolish. And all the while, his boss smiled at him and ran his fingertips over his jaw.

'So,' Yashiro continued, his tone gentle and dragged out teasingly, just like the hand that was trailing down Doumeki's back. 'Make me yours.'

Then he pushed Doumeki's ass forward with his hand and Doumeki complied instinctively, thrusting again into Boss' heat.

'Mm,' Yashiro moaned, low and deep. 'Fuck yes.'

Doumeki tilted his face up and kissed him as he started fucking again, feeling Boss' heat give way, feeling his body make room with every thrust.

'Prove I'm yours,' he gasped. 'Make me yours, Doumeki. Give me all your come! Shoot it deep inside me!'

'Boss,' Doumeki growled, which was as much as Yashiro had ever heard him say during sex.

'I want to feel you. I want to be yours. Only yours. Fill me up so much that I'll be leaking your come for a week.'

The words were like gasoline on the flames. Doumeki made a noise like a feral animal and his cock hammered without mercy. Yashiro felt them both charging towards the edge.

'Fill me deeper than anyone else ever has. Oh, fuck yes! Oh give it to me hard, Doumeki! Ah! Ah, shit! Fuck! _Yes!_ '

Yashiro's climax shuddered through him. At the same moment Doumeki pulled his hair back one final time and thrust in so deep that it hurt. Yashiro felt him release into his guts and nearly shivered at the thought of being coated inside by his come.

He didn't expect Doumeki to pull out abruptly after only a second or two. He glanced down to see Doumeki concentrating on his own dick, which he held in his hand, and on Yashiro's hole which was still spread open to him.

As Yashiro watched, Doumeki, still panting and gasping through his climax, squeezed out more drops of come, which landed hotly on and around Yashiro's hole. He then pushed his dick in again, pushing those drops in as far as he could. He withdrew fully again, urged the last few drops out in the same way and pushed it all into Yashiro's ass, stirring him deep. His size was enough to make Yashiro moan loudly again each time he breached his body. Each time Doumeki marked his territory.

Yashiro clung to his neck and gyrated his hips, forcing his passage to clench and release, milking him of every drop.

Then his head fell back against the door handle.

As they both panted, foreheads close together, they noticed that Doumeki had pushed them so far along the seat that they were pressed up against the door. All the windows of the car resembled a foggy Christmas morning.

* * *

'Hey, Doumeki.'

'Yes, Boss?'

'Where's my jacket?'

Silence.

'Your –?'

'My jacket. The suit jacket I took off and threw at you.'

Doumeki tried to concentrate. His mind was a revolving door of all the men he had tried to keep away from his boss. He vaguely remembered having something thrown over his face. He tried to remember what he did with it.

'You threw my Armani jacket onto the sticky, disgusting dance floor, didn't you?'

'I – I'm sorry, Boss –'

'No choice then. We're going back in. Hope they play some decent music this time.'

Doumeki's heart sank.


	6. The Nuances of Masochism

_Drabble. A small tack-on scene that draws from Chapter 13 of_ Careful Now.

* * *

After his twenty-storey drop, ex-cop Inami was a multi-coloured mess on the pavement outside the building.

Inside, Inami's men were sprawled on the floor of Yashiro's office, dead or dying.

Doumeki stood beside the desk, his knuckles raw and bloody. His chest was heaving both from having killed several people in the space of a few minutes and from having fucked Yashiro against his desk. In front of the men who were lying on the floor, dead or dying.

But not in front of Misumi, who was now also in the office and had his men running around hauling bodies out of there before the cops arrived.

Misumi glanced at Yashiro where he leaned casually against the desk; the desk against which he'd just been fucked.

His eyes flicked to Yashiro's forehead which had been split open by the butt of Inami's gun.

'You should get that stitched,' he said.

Yashiro smiled and touched the open cut gently.

'When I'm done enjoying it.'

Misumi exhaled and raised his eyebrows in defeat.

Strange, he thought, glancing between Yashiro and his bodyguard. How they seemed to be looking at each other without even really looking at each other.


	7. The Kiss

_The Chapter 23 canon kiss. Drabble._

* * *

'Why are you crying?' Yashiro asked in surprise.

The last thing, the very last thing, he expected was for Doumeki to kneel before him on the wet bathroom floor.

He could barely remember the jarring, broken words from earlier, both his own and Doumeki's. The pain in his arm and the shock of Doumeki's erection and the cold flare of anger it brought forth - that familiar desire to hurt - had all rushed straight to his head. That was his only rationale for why he had fallen apart at the seams. Why he had stood for a few confused moments beneath the running water with his clothes still on.

And why he couldn't bring himself to push Doumeki away, properly, when he pulled Yashiro close to his chest in an embrace that made no sense.

He simply didn't understand the gesture. He knew, though, that the smell of Doumeki, the cheap soap and the musk of him, had invaded his senses so completely that he could do nothing more than stare ahead, wide-eyed. He was seeing the cracked tile on the wall opposite, next to the door which Doumeki had eclipsed when he entered.

He eclipsed most doorways, Yashiro thought idly, his mind steadily growing numb.

Doumeki meanwhile was still caught somewhere in the middle of Boss' words.

 _I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of what it might do to me if I lose you._

Boss was there, on the floor of his bathroom, slightly dazed and still beautiful and vulnerable for the first time that Doumeki had seen him. Vulnerable in a way that he hadn't been even when he lay in a hospital bed or when he had stumbled about afterwards, once even falling into Doumeki's arms. This was different.

The rest had come without Doumeki's consent. The tears and the kneeling. And the desire, foremost in his mind, to finally make Boss his.

Yashiro felt him pull back and his heart beat out a gratingly loud rhythm that drowned out all else. His eyes remained open when Doumeki's lips pressed against his for the very first time.

He forgot to breathe. He tried to pull away.

'Th-that's not -'

But Doumeki kissed him again.

Protests smothered. Eyes still open. Doumeki everywhere.

'Do -'

And Doumeki pushed forwards so far that Yashiro's eyes closed and his hand curled on Doumeki's shirt.

 _'Mmph -'_

His tongue was warm. His smell was warm. His shirt was warm.

And Yashiro clung to it.


	8. Doumeki is an Undercover Cop

_Lots of angst. And sex and fluff, but mostly huge helpings of angst._

 _Set shortly after the epic, Earth-shattering canon kiss in Chapter 23 [UPDATE: AND THEN THE EVEN MORE EARTH-SHATTERING CANON SEX IN CHAPTER 25] of the manga._

 _Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

Yashiro should have known something serious was going on as soon as he entered Misumi's office. His Oyaji had always been gruff but even in the thick of the most nefarious of Yakuza wars, there was always a certain detached amusement behind his gruffness.

Now, there was nothing. Only heavy lines across his face.

Yashiro should have noticed it. But he was too caught up in what had happened recently.

The tears. The embrace. The kiss on the bathroom floor. Everything that had happened immediately after that. It was all still fresh. He could still taste Doumeki on him. Doumeki on his lips and skin and in his hair and inside him and around him. The smell of Doumeki on the sheets. Doumeki.

Doumeki.

And so he was understandably distracted.

'What's all this about?'

With his wide, languid grin, eyes half-lidded and seeing something else, Yashiro fell with a huff on Misumi's couch. Misumi himself stood by the coffee table. His Amou replacement,* whom Yashiro would always call his Amou Replacement, hovered nearby looking nervous.

Uncomfortably aware that he was trying to stall, trying to push back the moment as far as he could, Misumi stared at Yashiro for a few seconds. He saw the thinly disguised happiness. He remembered a boy he had once seen lying naked in the snow, whistling.

His insides churned at the thought of what the news would do to him.

'Where's Doumeki?' Misumi asked quietly.

Hearing his name sent a small flare to Yashiro's stomach.

 _I'm like a blushing schoolgirl,_ he thought in dry amusement. _Again._

'Waiting by the car, like you asked,' said Yashiro carelessly as he lit a cigarette one-handed.

He remembered how Doumeki had looked standing before the Lexus, fists at his sides. His face was as deadpan as ever but somehow communicated his reluctance to leave Boss' side. Yashiro had turned to look at him before he went into the building and, sure enough, Doumeki's gaze hadn't moved from Yashiro even for a moment.

'Good,' said Misumi.

'So what's going on? We were on our way to the docks. The transfer won't oversee itself.'

Yashiro then noticed the file in Misumi's hand, stamped with the Japanese Police emblem.

'We just had a leak from the OCD,' Misumi began.

'Ah. All my hard work with the Organised Crime Division paid off, did it?' said Yashiro, remembering how many times he had bent over backwards for their guy in the OCD. Bent over forwards more often than back, he reflected lightly. He wondered whether things would change, now that Doumeki –

'They found a rat,' Misumi said simply. 'This one's been protected by the very top. Only the highest levels of the JP know about him – the commissioner and vice-commissioner.'

'Sounds like quite the leak.'

Without another word, Misumi handed Yashiro the file. Yashiro opened it.

And the ground fell away.

* * *

As expected, Doumeki asked no questions when Yashiro climbed back into the Lexus, this time accompanied by Nanahara and Sugimoto. Doumeki closed the door after them and got into the driver's seat. Nanahara sat in front.

Before the call from Misumi, they had been on their way to the docks. Doumeki headed for the exit to the harbour.

'Drop-off point,' Yashiro said tersely. 'Warehouse 11, in Ueno.'

Doumeki glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. His voice was stiff like Doumeki had never heard before. His mouth was set in a firm, thin line and his eyes were strangely cold. Glassy. They were fixed out the window.

Even Nanahara and Sugimoto seemed tense. Doumeki wondered what had happened in Misumi's office.

'Yes, Boss.'

* * *

The warehouse reminded Doumeki of the time Yashiro had rescued him from Ota's clutches.* Boss had put himself and his job and even his life on the line for him.

Unlike that bright, blinding day, clouds had gathered thickly that afternoon and the air seemed somehow muted.

They entered the echoing space, Doumeki walking behind Yashiro and keeping his eyes on the shadowy edges of the empty warehouse. _Check your corners and blind spots._ Training from his days as a cop.

'Doumeki,' Yashiro said without turning. 'Your gun.'

Doumeki reached under his jacket and slipped it out of his belt line. He handed it to Boss.

He missed the subtle signal Boss gave to Nanahara, who had followed immediately behind Doumeki.

Something sharp and heavy collided with the back of his head. He saw stars and stumbled. Nanahara then came around and threw his knee into Doumeki's gut.

Winded, Doumeki fell to the floor of the warehouse. His mind flashed through a million possibilities, all of which centred on the likelihood that Boss was in danger.

'Boss –!'

He craned his neck up and was immediately relieved to see Yashiro standing nearby, unharmed. He held Doumeki's gun loosely at his side. Nanahara stepped between them, his face livid like Doumeki had only seen it once before.

Relief turned to confusion.

That was when the awful, impossible thought occurred to Doumeki. The one thing that he had done everything in his power to keep from Boss. The one thing that would destroy everything, everything, if Boss ever found out.

Right before Nanahara's foot collided with him again, he looked up at Boss' face. And his insides went cold.

The icy, dangerous gaze. The desire to hurt. The betrayal. It was all there in Yashiro's eyes. It was a look Doumeki had prayed he would never see.

He barely felt the kick in his stomach. He barely felt anything at all. He didn't even try to fight back.

* * *

'It's the perfect time to go undercover.'

His bosses – bosses as high up as bosses go – sat across the desk from him. The Shinseikai group's files were spread before him.

'The whole world, including your immediate commanding officer, thinks you've been kicked off the force. Everyone knows what you did. They'll lap it up at Shinseikai. A cop turned bad. Easy sell.'

Doumeki had remained silent. The operation was simple enough. Gather enough on the young leader and others, Misumi included, so the cops could build their case and bring down the entire group once and for all.

There was a photo of the young leader of the group in one of the files. His target, if they were lucky. He would have to start small. Start from the bottom. But if things worked out…

Yashiro. A name that rolled pleasantly off the tongue. A face that seemed too perfect for his world. A world that Doumeki was on the point of entering.

His superiors sensed his hesitation.

'The only question you need to ask yourself is whether you want to keep your job,' the commissioner said. He spoke slowly and deliberately, with a measure of care in each syllable, so Doumeki could feel the full weight of the decision.

'We know we're taking a risk even coming to you like this. But frankly, we don't care why you snapped and tried to kill your own father. Your record was impeccable before that… incident. And you know this beat, you know the neighbourhood back to front. Best of all, no one will suspect you. You're our guy.'

Another long silence. Doumeki felt his life stretch away before him. Perhaps it was the one way to redeem himself after the mess that he had left behind. The one way for him to forget the look on his sister's face when he saw her that day.

'This is your chance,' the police commissioner told him, with all the gravity and wisdom of a higher power, 'to prove who you really are.'

* * *

The warehouse door was wide open. Yashiro could see the thickening layers of clouds above. The way it plunged Tokyo into a heavy sort of silence which shielded it from what was taking place on the warehouse floor.

Yashiro watched as Nanahara's fists pounded into Doumeki's face. He felt each blow in a deep, private place. One that writhed in the reception and revelled in the infliction. He wanted Doumeki to hurt.

He wanted him to hurt as much as he was hurting.

He wanted Doumeki to feel as though the ground had fallen away. Like he had forgotten how to draw breath.

'As far as we can tell,' Misumi had said gravely back in his office, 'Doumeki Chikara is still under the gainful employment of the OCD.'

Sugimoto watched from nearby, his gun trained on Doumeki's huge form, to keep him in check. But Yashiro could tell that it was unnecessary. Doumeki wasn't even trying to defend himself, let alone fight back.

Yashiro was both there, where Doumeki was being beaten, and back in Misumi's office when he had found out for the first time. It hadn't yet caught up. Not really. Not enough for him to look back on every little moment and understand what it had all really meant. Why it had turned out that way. How he could have been so blind.

'I'm sorry, Yashiro,' Misumi had said, using a voice Yashiro had rarely ever heard. 'I know what it's like when those closest to you…'*

Yashiro turned to look at him and felt a spark of pure, white anger grow in the pit of his stomach. It came from everywhere and nowhere and it was so powerful it threatened to overwhelm him, but it was focused on Misumi at that moment.

No idea. Misumi had _no idea_ what it was like. Him and Amou? Him and _Amou?_ It was laughable. Misumi had no idea what it was like. Not a fucking clue.

But in the end, Yashiro didn't even muster a glare. He battened down that surge of anger and instead fed it to the pit of emptiness that had opened up.

The pit of emptiness that had opened in his childhood in the wake of his stepfather. And again when he was fifteen and crying his soul out over something Kageyama had said to him almost in passing. And again when he pushed Kuga in Kageyama's direction. And again and again every time he felt the need to be filled. By someone. Anyone.

It gaped, yawning open yet again, when he stared at Doumeki Chikara's police file which he held in his hands. Doumeki stared up at him from his profile photo, impassive and serene.

 _You have nice eyes._

Eyes that were steady and unwavering and dedicated and intense. Eyes that Yashiro, in his utter, breathtaking stupidity, thought he was beginning to learn how to read.

* * *

Only a month after he had begun working for Kirishima, Doumeki's particular talents, and lack thereof, had been noted by both his immediate superiors and Nanahara. Namely, his silence and his size and his inefficiency as a loan shark.

 _We're short on people at the moment. On top of that, he's not good at talking so I thought we could use him as a bodyguard. You wanted one, right Boss?_

After meeting Yashiro for the first time, Doumeki carried memories of Yashiro's mouth around his cock and the way his eyes had taken Doumeki in. Like he already knew Doumeki's every secret. His sister. His father. His job. All of it.

He called headquarters.

'Only a month in and you're the pervert's lapdog already, huh? Nice job.'

The commissioner's voice was brittle and dry over the phone.

'Do whatever he wants. Be careful for now. Later, when you have his trust, start gathering what you can. When you and all the other informants have enough, we'll round up all the roaches in one big hit at Tsuji.'

Doumeki knew the plan.

'Give us something we can use.'

* * *

But Doumeki never did.

His very first day on the job, he had been handed a drunk, half-unconscious Yashiro to take home.

 _The boss is beautiful. That's what you're thinking right? Your eyes say it all._

Misumi's words had cut him to the quick. He had no idea he had been that transparent. His heart pounded madly, wondering what else they might be onto. Whether this had all been a fool's mission from the beginning.

Yashiro's weight on his back was an anchor that held him to the world. He felt grounded and real for the first time in years. He wondered whether he was still, somehow, trying to prove who he really was.

A few hours later, Yashiro fell asleep with his head still in Doumeki's lap; on the inside of Doumeki's thigh. Dawn leaked slowly in from the world outside and Doumeki turned to look at it.

He moved Yashiro's head gently onto the bed.

And he searched Yashiro's flat half-heartedly.

 _Give us something we can use._

His heart wasn't in it. Each drawer he pulled open, each file he riffled through. It all felt like grains of sand that sifted pointlessly through his hands.

After a while, he realised he was hoping not to find anything. He was relieved when it turned out, as he had suspected, that Yashiro was smarter than that.

And so he returned to Boss' bed. He intended to just lie there for a few moments. Instead he fell asleep.

It was the following morning that Yashiro found the little newspaper clipping in Doumeki's pocket. The piece on Aoi Doumeki, an up-and-coming artist.

That day was the day everything changed for Doumeki. The day he finally realised who he was. Or who he would try to be. For Boss.

* * *

 _I don't have any more secrets,_ Doumeki had once told him.

 _You're a bad liar,_ Yashiro had replied.^

* * *

The thuds of Nanahara's fists and feet impacting Doumeki's body were much louder than the muffled sounds that occasionally came from his mouth.

Yashiro's eyes were cold. His face and body were rigid. But on the inside, he was broken.

'Is that why?' he said suddenly.

It was the first time he had spoken since Nanahara began. The pounding stopped. A long, awful silence claimed the warehouse; a silence that was magnified by the broiling grey clouds outside.

'Is that why you wanted to stay by my side so badly?'

His voice didn't quiver for a moment. It was all delivered in a low, smooth, acerbic tone. The words and the look on Yashiro's face hurt Doumeki more than anything Nanahara had done to him.

He hesitated. He tasted blood. He felt the skin beneath his eye starting to swell. He tried to form words.

'No, Boss –'

Nanahara kicked him again.

Yashiro didn't stop him.

* * *

He couldn't defect. He couldn't simply switch sides like he had turned the page of a book. If the commissioner got any wind of his newfound loyalty, he would be arrested in a heartbeat.

So his weekly phone calls to headquarters continued. He would send them things. Small things. Nothings, really. Plans for transactions and drops and deals that would change at the last moment. So Shinseikai was never implicated. So Yashiro was never in harm's way.

'Heard you sliced your pinkie off,' the commissioner said a few weeks later.

Doumeki remained silent.

'You've got balls, I'll give you that. Not a lot of agents would have gone that far.'

If the commissioner ever suspected, Doumeki never found out.

In any case, by then, Doumeki was long gone. He was Yashiro's arms and legs. And he would follow Yashiro to the ends of the Earth.

* * *

Eventually, when it felt like years had passed, Yashiro lifted a hand.

Nanahara stepped back, panting and sweating and furious. And still vaguely guilty about the fact that it was his own fault that Doumeki had wormed his way to Boss' side in the first place.

Yashiro stared at him. Doumeki felt small again in a way that had nothing to do with his bruises or the fact that he was curled up on the floor.

He knew and Yashiro knew and Nanahara knew and Sugimoto knew what would happen next. How the Yakuza dealt with rats.

There wouldn't be a chance for him to even explain himself or –

'Do you deny it?' Yashiro asked suddenly. The gun was still by his side, pointing straight down.

Doumeki blinked at him, taking shallow, painful breaths.

Yashiro stared down and there, somewhere, Doumeki saw a chink in his armour. A flash of hurt. Something that he could latch onto.

But the question. The question itself was one he couldn't answer.

Yashiro waited and prayed. He prayed for anything to fall from the sky and tell him he didn't have to go through with it. That it had all been a mistake. That Doumeki cared for him, and it hadn't all been a huge, glaring, hilarious lie. He waited.

The safety clicking off the gun resounded in the cavernous space.

'Do you deny that you're still working for the OCD? And that you have been since the beginning?'

It wasn't a quiver exactly. But there was something in Yashiro's voice, something unlike him, that made the other two glance at him uncertainly.

'Deny it,' Yashiro ordered. It was both an order and not. Both desperate and not.

Doumeki, at the best of times, couldn't express himself with any degree of confidence. Now, with something so important on the line, he had no hope at all.

He breathed heavily and tried to hold Boss' gaze for as long as he could. Then it fell away.

'I can't, Boss.'

In that split-second, Yashiro thought he could pull the trigger. He realised he could, in fact, fathom seeing Doumeki lying there with a bullet hole in his chest. The anger and betrayal that clawed at his insides were powerful enough for all that and worse. He remembered Doumeki's huge hands on his body. The heat and relentlessness of his cock. The way he had watched Yashiro and moulded his body beneath him. The way he had murmured a few words into Yashiro's hair in the burnished light of sunset before they fell asleep.

All lies.

And yet the gun remained by his side. The safety remained off. Time ticked away in that grey warehouse on that grey day. Nanahara and Sugimoto felt the space around them stretch thinly. The world held its breath.

Despite how long it took Yashiro to make a physical move, the desire to pull the trigger only lasted a moment.

He abruptly turned away from Doumeki's battered body and walked towards the warehouse door where the sky was still grey and brooding but where the rain held itself back.

'Boss?' Nanahara called nervously. It occurred to him that he might be left to do the dirty work. He suddenly wondered if he could really bring himself to do it.

'I'm late,' Yashiro replied without even looking at his shoulder. 'Matsubara's waiting at the docks.'

'But what about –?'

'I'll deal with it later. Stay here. Sugimoto, you're driving.'

Sugimoto slipped his gun into his belt line and followed Yashiro to the car.

Sighing in frustration, and a small amount of relief, Nanahara turned back to Doumeki.

Doumeki, whose eyes hadn't left Yashiro even for a moment.

* * *

 _ ***Author's note:** I mixed up canon and my own _ Careful Now _headcanon in this AU. This story takes place shortly after the canon kiss in Chapter 23 [update: and after the first-time canon sex in Chapter 25] but also, somehow, after all the many things that happened in_ Careful Now _, including the fact that Amou was revealed to be a bad guy (and killed), and including the part where Yashiro rescues Doumeki from bad guys in a warehouse, and including the part where Yashiro and Doumeki meet Yoneda Kou (which comes up in the next part). It's all a big confusing mess of a timeline lol. Hope you enjoyed anyway! Part II soon :)_


	9. Doumeki is an Undercover Cop (Part II)

_Final part of the Undercover Cop story. Continued angst. Also sex and a tiny bit of fluff, as promised._

 _And an ending that is highly suggestive but also highly ambiguous. Hope you enjoy!_

* * *

Massive thank you to KatBlack for her love and support while I wrote up this little AU, and for inspiring Nanahara's line about 'taking the rat for a walk' (and for dealing with my 'SHOULD I PUT UP THIS STORY SEPARATELY' dilemma lol). You're a gem, mi amor!

anahara felt himself slowly turning into a watchdog. Doumeki was thrown into the basement room of one of Shinseikai's front companies and despite Nanahara's standing as Yashiro's #1 henchman, or so he thought, he was posted outside Doumeki's door around the clock. He had the distinct feeling he was being punished for his part in the rat fiasco.

'Don't know why Boss hasn't just killed you,' Nanahara would growl as he walked Doumeki to the can and back.

Doumeki, as ever, remained silent.

In fact, Nanahara wondered why Boss was dragging his feet on that count. He had always suspected that Boss and Doumeki had been doing the dirty for a while, but he didn't think something like that would hold Boss, of all people, back.

The first day or two stretched into a week. Food would be brought down and Nanahara occasionally was relieved by an underling. Yashiro never showed. And the order to get rid of Doumeki never came down.

And so Doumeki was left alone to nurse his failures and self-loathing.

He was left alone with the weight of how much he had hurt Boss.

More than any of it, he missed Boss with a near-physical ache.

* * *

Yashiro's world had turned into a series of bleak, chrome montages that slid past, past his vision and his hearing, without his having a say in it. It was a similar place he had descended into during his childhood. When those he had trusted had turned on him. And he was left alone.

He went to work and to meetings. He oversaw drop-offs and transfers. He gave orders and took orders.

But Misumi noticed. As did everyone else. He simply wasn't the same.

Gone was the snark and the laugh and the smile that reduced the world to a punchline. Just smoke rising from his mouth and half-lidded eyes that were too weighed down to be considered mellow. Like they were seeing something, or someone, who was elsewhere.

'The longer he's alive the more he's a liability,' Misumi tried telling him, gently enough given the circumstances. 'Especially if he doesn't have a chance to report back to his boss, they'll suspect he's been made and then –'

'I'm handling it,' Yashiro said, a little more sharply than he intended.

The mention of Doumeki's 'boss', his real boss, had left yet another wound in the same place. A place where he doubted the scars would ever heal, if such small, unassuming words like that could leave such a deep gouge.

Misumi pursed his lips and said nothing.

From morning to evening, Yashiro was shielded from the world by a thin, clear film. Only when he slipped under the covers at night did this barrier of numbness threaten to crack. He knew the questions and thoughts that had been hovering like vultures would descend and start tearing.

 _How long?_

 _The whole time?_

 _The whole fucking time?_

 _Maybe not… maybe he changed his mind. Maybe somewhere along the way, he decided –_

 _Then why didn't he tell me? Why didn't he just come to me and –?_

 _Don't be a fool. Of course he didn't change his mind. He didn't even defend himself, except for that one pathetic 'No, Boss' which could have meant anything. He lied. He lied from the beginning. He played you from the beginning._

 _You're pathetic._

 _How much of what he said… and did…?_

 _How much of it was… his job?_

 _I can't –_

 _I don't –_

 _– have the strength for this._

He knew that after everything else he had been through, this would be the one thing – the final straw – that would bring down the weight that he had kept at bay his entire life.

Thankfully, sleep always managed to find him before then.

* * *

'Know how much Boss hates me?' Nanahara said sourly. 'They're off doing some big deal, pretty much all hands on deck, and I'm left here to babysit your rat ass. I'm lower than the underlings now.'

Almost a week on, Doumeki was still being held in the basement room.

Each day melded into the next with no distinction.

His wounds healed by themselves. Nothing broken, everything bruised.

And Nanahara didn't hear him speak a single word in all that time.

Despite this, Nanahara had gotten so used to playing jailer that he let his hatred of Doumeki occasionally slide. He occasionally let himself fall back into the typical one-sided conversation they used to share. Occasionally.

So the moment that changed everything owed to an off-hand comment on one of Nanahara's occasional moods.

He stood inside the door, smoking in spite of the smoke having nowhere to go, and watched Doumeki staring uninterestedly at the bland food that had been sent down.

'And it's in the Tsuji complex,' Nanahara continued. 'A million levels underground in the parking lot. No cell phone reception or anything. Plus it's with the new Matsubara leaders, so who knows if they're out for blood or not. If shit hits the fan, I won't even know about it until I read it in the papers.'

 _Tsuji._

The name plucked a string from his memory. From months ago. The commissioner's dry, brittle words in his ear.

 _When you and all the other informants have enough, we'll round up all the roaches in one big hit at Tsuji._

Doumeki's head snapped up.

'But, hey,' Nanahara drawled on, resplendent in self-pity. 'Who needs Nana for real mob stuff when I can be here taking care of your sorry –?'

'It's a set-up,' said Doumeki suddenly.

Nanahara almost jumped. It was the very first thing Doumeki had said in almost a week.

* * *

 **Doumeki explains the mob/cop situation to Nanahara in bullet points:**

–Both Shinseikai and Matsubara have been infiltrated by undercover agents (Doumeki, technically, being one of them).

–When they gather enough dirt and evidence on their gang, they organise for their bosses to make the deal in a pre-determined place where the police can ambush them immediately.

–The transfer takes place in full view of undercover agents and police, and would be the final piece of evidence needed to make arrests and put people away for a long time.

–The fact that it is happening in Tsuji means Shinseikai and Matsubara were both walking into their own arrests.

* * *

Nanahara's cigarette fell from his lips. It rolled away on the concrete floor.

'We have to warn Boss,' Doumeki said unnecessarily.

'No cell phone reception,' Nanahara repeated numbly.

'Then we have to go. Now.'

'It might… it might not be a set-up. Tsuji could just be a coincidence.'

Nanahara was dialling Yashiro's number, knowing it would be futile, and reached for the door handle. Doumeki took a few steps towards him.

Nanahara turned.

'The hell are you doing?'

'I'm coming too.'

'Are you high? There's no fucking way I'm taking the rat for a walk.'

He hung up and swore under his breath when his call went nowhere. He barely registered Doumeki; in his mind he was already in the car, flying towards Boss. Perhaps even getting the chance to play hero.

'I'm not a rat,' said Doumeki suddenly.

Despite everything, the tone in his voice made Nanahara turn. Doumeki had, after all, revealed something that would undo years of undercover work. If he was telling the truth.

'And I… I know who the undercover agents are in Matsubara. I have to be there.'

 _I have to prove who I am._

The bullet wound in Nanahara's shoulder spiked in pain, as it often did when he was stressed. Or when he was caught in an impossible decision.

A decision that would see Nanahara as having played the hero or played the fool. Again. And just based on the question he was about to ask, he had a feeling it would be the latter.

'I'm going to ask you this once,' he said carefully, even as his pulse steadily picked up. 'Are you on their side or not?'

He waited for an impassioned speech that would rid him of the responsibility. So he could at least defend himself if it turned out to be the dumbest move in the history of the Yakuza.

'I – I was,' Doumeki said. He paused for a moment with his mouth slightly open.

He was suddenly assaulted by all the thoughts he had kept at bay for the past week. The past few months. Ever since he had sat across from Yashiro for the first time. He tried to funnel it all into the impassioned speech that would exonerate him.

Nanahara waited.

'I was,' Doumeki repeated. He squared his shoulders. 'But I'm not now.'

Nanahara stared. He waited for a few more precious seconds before it became clear that Doumeki was done.

'That's it? _That's_ your amazing defence?'

A deadpan stare. Balled fists. Nothing more to offer except for what was right there. The impasse between Doumeki and Nanahara could have lasted a long time. But they didn't have a long time.

And for some reason, Nanahara was remembering the wet thud of his fists and foot pummelling into Doumeki's face and body. It was accompanied by a feeling uncomfortably close to guilt.

'Fuck,' he assessed as he ran a hand through his hair. 'Okay. Fine. Fuck. Let's go.'

'What?'

'Let's go!'

He handed Doumeki a gun and they flew down the corridor.

Nanahara dryly considered it a good sign that Doumeki hadn't yet shot him in the back and fucked off.

* * *

They reached Tsuji with only minutes to spare.

Everyone tensed when a car hurtled into their midst from the upper levels. Thanks to Doumeki's reckless driving, a mere ten minutes had passed since Yashiro and his men arrived.

The members of Shinseikai were on the point of opening the trunks of cars to fish out their end of the deal; briefcases and duffel bags and files. All the usual Yakuza shit, Yashiro thought again, almost bored. He leaned against the trunk of the Lexus, his cigarette on its last embers. His mind, as ever, on Doumeki. And as ever shrouded by the thin, clear film of numbness.

On the other side of the underground complex was the Matsubara, gathering their gear together in the same way. They eyed one another across the echoing space. Ever since Yashiro helped Ryuuzaki find his woman (whose treatment at the hands of Hirata had motivated Ryuuzaki to quit the Yakuza life for good), new leaders had stepped in to fill the void.

In a few minutes, a new alliance would be forged in Tokyo's underbelly.

The last thing he expected was for Nanahara's car to come tearing down the ramp and come to a screeching halt near them.

And for Doumeki, of all people, to climb out.

Yashiro's stomach lurched.

The other gang stared at the sudden arrivals. A few hands went to holsters.

'What are you doing?' Yashiro demanded, his tone caught somewhere between dazed and angry.

Doumeki's heart thudded madly when he saw Boss – the shine of his hair, the cut of his suit, the line of his jaw, everything that he had been unable to shake for the past week – but he had to try to focus. He strode quickly towards Yashiro while keeping his eyes on the members of Matsubara milling about on the other side of the concrete expanse.

Yashiro felt the anger threaten to take over him again.

'Doume – Nanahara, what the hell's going on?'

Nanahara followed close behind Doumeki, gun cocked and at the ready. He heard the dangerous tone in Yashiro's voice and wondered again whether he was playing the hero or the idiot.

He stepped close to Boss' ear and began to explain in an undertone just as Doumeki spotted them from across the parking lot. Two of them. Members of the OCD and long-term undercover agents. They recognised him too.

That was all the confirmation he needed.

'It's an ambush,' Doumeki said, turning to face Yashiro properly.

Yashiro's breath caught in his throat at the sheer size of him and the blazing look in his eye. The words took a moment to catch up.

When they did, and even with the fragments of information Nanahara had told him, he still couldn't come to terms with the full import of what Doumeki had done. It would take him hours to do so.

'Stop,' he said suddenly, snapping his head around to the men who were on the point of unloading the cars. It was an order based almost entirely on instinct.

That was when the first shots were fired.

* * *

 **The mob/cop situation in a few more bullet points:**

–The unexpected arrival of Nanahara and Doumeki, and the fact that Yashiro looked like he was backing out of the deal, makes Matsubara suspicious that they're about to get screwed over.

–They start firing.

–The cops who have been waiting in the shadows, figuring that the transaction isn't going ahead, spring out and subdue the guys of Matsubara, knowing that they have enough to get one gang at least, if not Shinseikai as well.

–Shinseikai, thanks to Doumeki and Nanahara (who comes off, in the end, as a hero of sorts), manage to avoid any arrests or casualties. They fire a few shots in response, jump into cars and take off.

–The undercover cops recognise Doumeki and deduce that his sudden appearance was the reason Shinseikai was tipped off. Doumeki's loyalties are revealed.

* * *

When the crack of bullets ripped through the air of that underground lot, Doumeki's instincts kicked in. He grabbed Yashiro's arm and pulled him behind the cover of the car. Nanahara swore again and fired a few rounds before ducking.

Bullets glanced off the car in loud, tinny ricochets.

Yashiro was suddenly breathing in Doumeki's musk and felt the strong grip on his arm. He tried to focus. He called out to his men to fall back.

Doors slammed and tires screeched.

That was when they heard the barked orders of the police begin to join in the general cacophony. Doumeki spied them from over the car's hood; fully decked out in bullet-proof vests and little curly ear-pieces. His former life.

And crouched beside him then, his new life. The only life he wanted.

'Are you okay, Boss?'

Boss' mouth was slightly open in a pant, but otherwise he seemed unfazed. Unfrazzled. His usual self. It occurred to Doumeki that he hadn't once seen Boss like that day he sat in the corner of Doumeki's bathroom. He had never seen that helplessness before or since. Not even here, during a mob-versus-mob-versus-cop showdown.

The suddenness and the urgency of their close proximity behind the car ought to have made Yashiro's body flush with anticipation. He ought to be feeling the most profound relief over what the past few minutes meant.

But the hurt was still there. Doumeki's betrayal was still right there, at the forefront of his mind. It felt like it would never erode even slightly. Being close to him like that again only tracked a fresh cut into the wound.

He pulled his arm out of Doumeki's grasp.

'Don't touch me.'

The words, though delivered quietly, landed on Doumeki like the lash of a whip.

'Move,' Yashiro ordered.

Doumeki shifted backwards and Yashiro opened the car door and crawled onto the seat, keeping his head clear of the window.

'Get in front,' he said.

Doumeki obeyed.

His body grazed Yashiro's as he clambered over the top of Yashiro and into the front seat, all while the back of his head and neck burned, expecting a bullet to burst through a window at any second.

'Go!'

Theirs was one of the last cars to leave Tsuji. Every one of Yashiro's men managed to tear their way out of Tokyo's underbelly. Not even a shoulder had been nicked by a stray bullet.

As Doumeki gunned the car up the ramp, Yashiro caught a glimpse of the far end of the parking complex where the new leader of Matsubara was being slammed against the hood of a car and cuffed.

 _That could have been us_ , Yashiro realised. _All of us._

He flicked a glance at the back of Doumeki's head.

* * *

Over the phone, a distraught and relieved Misumi told Yashiro to go into hiding.

Yashiro refused point-blank.

'They don't have enough on me, or anyone at Shinseikai. Why else would they have waited so long to spring? They needed to see the transfer, and it didn't happen.'

'What if they have enough just because you showed?' Misumi pressed.

'Then they'll find me soon enough,' Yashiro said, his adrenaline rush slowly giving way to a kind of righteous exhaustion. 'I'll be waiting with my feet up on my coffee table and enjoying a scotch. Not hiding under some rock.'

He hung up in the middle of Misumi's protests.

Doumeki listened silently. They wound their way through the streets back into the heart of Tokyo. Doumeki knew the way to Boss' apartment without needing to think.

The rain that had been threatening to fall for days suddenly let loose on the city. Streetlamps swam by in a blurry haze.

Yashiro leaned back on the seat.

It almost feels, he thought, as though nothing had changed.

Neither said a word until they pulled up outside Yashiro's apartment. By then, Yashiro had processed everything that had happened. He understood a great deal more than he did before. And he had managed to break down the situation in which Doumeki now found himself.

 **(The Doumeki situation in two bullet points:**

–Doumeki is now in deep shit with his former cop bosses for having definitively switched to the dark side.

–Doumeki is still in deep shit with the Yakuza for being a rat.)

Doumeki waited for Yashiro to get out of the car. He didn't look into the rear-view mirror. The silence that hung between them was like none of the ones they had experienced before.

'Where are you going to go?' Yashiro asked.

Doumeki stared at the dashboard.

'Home,' he said.

The tiny apartment with the rust-speckled towel railing.

'You'll be arrested before you even walk in the front door,' Yashiro said.

'I know.'

Drops danced on the roof of the car in a softer imitation of bullets. Yashiro sighed loudly and opened the car door, letting in the steady sound of the downpour.

'Get out.'

It took Doumeki a few seconds to process Yashiro's quiet command. He then blinked and stepped out of the car into the rain. Yashiro didn't turn.

Doumeki followed him inside.

* * *

First the suit jacket came off. Then the vest. Then the sling. Then the shirt.

Each item landed on the floor in a soft swish.

Confused, heart pounding in his ears, Doumeki succumbed to muscle memory and followed in Yashiro's wake, picking up what he dropped.

And when he straightened, Yashiro stood before him, his chest and arms bare, at the doorway to his bedroom. His eyes were blazing in a whirl of emotions Doumeki didn't understand.

'Boss –'

Yashiro pulled him forwards by his tie. The kiss was hard and smouldering. Angry.

Boss' clothes fell from Doumeki's arms to the floor and he was suddenly pulled forward until Boss was crushed between him and the doorframe. The hand on Doumeki's face and neck was hungry and insistent. It clawed at his shirt, damp from the rain. Pawed at the buckle. Made up for its counterpart, which hung limply by his hip.

Doumeki surfaced from the kiss only to be pulled back in. He felt himself stiffening helplessly. His hands worked of their own accord and pulled Yashiro into him harder, so the full length of their bodies were pressed together. He then palmed his way heavily up Boss' back and into his hair. His soft, wonderful hair which he clenched hard in his fist.

He knew they ought to stop. He knew he shouldn't stumble so willingly towards the bed, being led by his dick, being led by the desire to make Boss his once more, if only for now. There was something about the look on Boss' face that scared him.

But he was there, kneeling between Boss' legs, kissing and biting his neck, seeing him prone and panting beneath him, hair askew. And he knew nothing would stop him then.

By the time he had taken Yashiro's pants off, Yashiro had managed to tear away the last button of Doumeki's shirt but didn't get a chance to peel it off him. Doumeki had reared back and pulled Yashiro's legs up high until they were pressed against his chest.

There was that same ferocity in Doumeki's eyes that Yashiro had seen in the back seat of the Lexus right before Doumeki did exactly what he was about to do.

His tongue, hot and wet, thrust deep into Yashiro's hole. His fingers pulled his cheeks apart as he delved.

Yashiro moaned and his head arched back into the mattress. A shiver raced through his body at his helplessness in Doumeki's hands. At the way his every muscle responded to the deft flicks and jabs of Doumeki's tongue and fingers.

Doumeki.

To his utter humiliation, tears stung his eyes.

'Enough,' Yashiro gasped, only just managing to hold back his tears. 'Fuck me.'

Doumeki drew away and tried to think clearly through the cloud of lust. He had barely stretched Yashiro open.

'Boss –'

'Fuck me right now. _Right now.'_

The urgent tone spilled into angry desperation. Doumeki had reached the end of his tether. Boss was spread wide in front of Doumeki, his cock stiff and leaking, his entire body quivering and waiting for him. For Doumeki.

Yashiro shivered once again at the sight of Doumeki looming over him, the hard muscles of his chest and stomach revealed through his open shirt. His hair was slick from the rain. A single drop had left a trail down his long, solid jaw. His eyes were alight with a single-minded purpose.

And his cock found Yashiro's hole.

And then he tore his way in.

* * *

And then he paused.

The way Yashiro cried out, the way he gripped the sheets, managed to cut through the haze of pleasure brought about by the unearthly heat and tightness.

'Boss…'

Yashiro writhed, his legs spread, his eyebrows arched in pain. Moans emerged in short puffs. Doumeki's cock twitched inside him.

'Boss, are you –?'

'Shut up,' Yashiro said in a hoarse whisper. His gaze was ruthless again.

'But –'

'Fuck me. Fuck me hard.'

 _Fuck me until I bleed._

 _Fuck me until I'm broken._

'Do it.'

And so Doumeki, against his better judgment, against all the voices in his head, succumbed to his primal urge to defile.

He pulled out until just the head of his cock remained. Then he plunged back into Yashiro's body in one merciless thrust.

 _'Ah!'_

He pushed in again.

And again.

Each time, it pulled a new, tortured sound from deep inside Yashiro. The friction was so great that even Doumeki felt the pain interlacing the pleasure.

'Harder,' Yashiro urged. 'Deeper!'

Doumeki complied.

He held Yashiro's hands down on either side of his head, the good one and the dead one, and hung his head low so he could see the full force of each thrust on Yashiro's face. So that his mellow eyes and serene, enigmatic smile were a distant memory.

'Hit me,' Yashiro hissed beneath him.

Mellow eyes.

Serene, enigmatic smile.

A side of Boss he hadn't seen for a long time. A side of Boss he feared he might never see again.

'Hit me, Doumeki.'

 _Please._

'Doumeki –'

Hearing his name emerge like that from Boss' throat almost pushed him to the edge. He stared down at his defiant, imploring eyes and tried to imagine it. He grit his teeth. He knew what he was capable of. And what he wasn't.

So he closed his hand on Yashiro's hair again, almost painfully, and kissed him. His cock never let up even for a moment.

 _'Mmmh!'_

Yashiro tried to pull back. His fingers tried to get a grip on the cropped hair on the back of Doumeki's head. Tears smarted his eyes yet again.

 _Hurt me._

And finally when Doumeki reared, he pulled out completely and flipped Yashiro over onto his stomach.

When he plunged back in, Yashiro's cry was muffled in the blanket. Doumeki planted his arms on either side of his body and pounded. Sweat and rain dripped from his hair onto Yashiro's back.

'Ugh! Ah, Doumeki… ugh…'

Doumeki pulled Boss' hips up and held his head down, eyes narrowed with lust. He took in the curve of Boss' back and neck before he started thrusting again.

'Doumeki...'

 _Why won't you hurt me?_

'Nngh… Doumeki…'

 _You've already done so much worse._

'Dou –'

 _How could you?_

And the tears spilled without any further warning. They poured hotly from his eyes and his throat. He gripped the sheets beneath him as Doumeki's cock kept carving its way into him, pushing breath and tears from his body.

 _How could you?_

The weight of everything that he had been keeping back finally cracked. The weight of Doumeki's betrayal had finally caught up and the vultures swooped in. Feathers flew everywhere, dank and muggy. He couldn't breathe for the tears.

It took Doumeki another few confused thrusts before he noticed. The strange little tremors were new. He didn't understand why Boss was curling into himself. Why he suddenly seemed so much smaller than before.

And then he heard the quiet sobs.

Doumeki's heart sank to the bottom of a well.

'Boss…'

For a moment longer, he held himself there, buried inside Yashiro and watching him cry as though from miles away.

Then he pulled out, bent low over Yashiro's body and gathered him close. He held Yashiro fast against his chest. For a while, his mind was a complete blank.

'I'm sorry,' he then heard himself say.

Yashiro felt it all without really feeling it. There were arms and words spoken into the back of his neck. But he felt as though it was happening to someone else. He wasn't there. He was still hidden somewhere behind the dank, muggy feathers. And still the tears poured.

Doumeki squeezed him tighter as though frightened he would slip through his arms into a place where he couldn't follow.

'I'm sorry,' he insisted, his voice breaking. 'I'm sorry, Boss.'

Yashiro heard it then. He heard the words in Doumeki's deep, broken voice.

And gradually the tightness of Doumeki's hold became real. The breath on the back of his neck was there. It was warm.

He felt himself slowly fading back in, weighing down the bed, pressed beneath the weight of another's body. Doumeki's body.

Doumeki.

* * *

After a foreboding build-up of days, the rain itself lasted less than an hour. The last few drops swatted half-heartedly against the window. Dawn hunkered at the edge of the skyline.

An exhausted, drained Yashiro extricated himself gently from Doumeki's arms. He lay a little apart from him, reclaiming his breath and staring straight ahead at the blue-black colour that the wall would always take at that particular time of night.

Doumeki sat up slightly, leaning his weight on one elbow, his knee bent slightly in the air. Waiting.

Yashiro's rain-streaked hair was drying slowly. His back was still turned. Doumeki had the feeling that the next thing that was said would somehow determine everything –

'Cigarette,' Yashiro said, softly but suddenly.

Doumeki stared.

Then he slowly pulled his pants back up over his hips, got out bed and rifled through the pockets of Yashiro's discarded pants.

Yashiro turned to watch him. His huge arms and broad back hunched over on the ground. Doumeki Chikara. The silent man with a big secret. A few big secrets.

Doumeki handed him the cigarette and wasn't sure what to do with the lighter. When Yashiro placed the cigarette to his lips and dropped his hand, Doumeki moved forward and lit it for him.

He watched the way Yashiro's skin was lit up in the sharp amber glow. How his cheekbones stood out like they were designed that way. How his eyes reflected the colour of the flame in that one moment.

Yashiro took a drag and the blue-black of night claimed him again. But his eyes were different. Familiar. They watched Doumeki steadily as though seeing him for the first time.

Just as Doumeki dared to allow himself a thimbleful of hope, Yashiro sighed once more.

'Lend me your lap.'

It was well after Yashiro stretched and rested his head against Doumeki's lap that it caught up with him.

And he found it was his turn to be brought right to the brink of tears. He didn't know how he managed to hold them back.

On his lap, Yashiro smoked and listened to the rain dying down.

Long minutes passed in silence.

* * *

'When?'

Doumeki looked at him.

'When did you change your mind?' said Yashiro. 'When did you… stop working for them?'

The day came to Doumeki immediately and vividly. He had pushed Yashiro backwards into the elevator doors, tie in hand, anger surging powerfully to his head. He had then raced down the stairs to his sister, who had told him gently, tearfully, of all the things Yashiro had said. And after he had gotten over his moment of numb shock, after sitting down with his sister for the first time in years, he understood the magnitude of what his boss had done for him.

That was the day he decided.

That was the day he had gone to Yashiro's apartment and waited for him. Where he had felt three foot tall under Boss' benign but inscrutable gaze. And where he had picked up the trail of clothes Boss left behind him. He had seen Boss' naked body for the first time, flush with the incandescent light in his bathroom, behind the humid cloud of vapour. He had knelt behind Boss and hung his head and begged to remain by Boss' side, no matter what.

That was the day.

He hesitated. He wondered how he could tell Boss that. He wondered if he even should.

'It was –' he began falteringly. 'That day when Aoi… when you talked to her and… and then –'

'Ah.'

The day came to Yashiro just as vividly. He remembered Doumeki's voice from behind him, low and soft and echoing in the bathroom, asking to remain by his side, no matter what.

He looked at Doumeki again. The hurt in Doumeki's eyes was only too clear. The self-loathing and the regret and the immense guilt.

'That soon, huh?'

He smiled when he remembered how he had repeated the words almost exactly when he asked Doumeki about his first erection.

Milestones all over the place. From impotence to allegiance.

He chuckled. The sound reminded Doumeki of dappled sunlight.

'You know what I keep thinking about? The day I made you dress up like a cop.'

He crossed his long, bare legs ponderously. Doumeki's eyes were drawn to them yet again.

'Little did I know, huh? Nanahara even came in and had a fit seeing a cop in my office. So many levels of dramatic irony there, I can't even keep up.'

Doumeki remembered how his heart had pounded as Yashiro made him stand there in his uniform, behind the badge to which he was still technically bound.

'Life's funny like that sometimes, isn't it?' Yashiro mused, sounding like a jaded veteran of an old, merciless war. 'A real riot.'

There would be cops at Doumeki's door. Misumi and the rest of Shinseikai wanting his blood. The vague possibility of cops breaking down Boss' door and placing him under arrest at any moment.

But he was lying in Boss' bed, with Boss' head in his lap, and against all odds, despite everything that had happened over the past few harrowing days, Boss seemed to have forgiven him for the worst of his secrets.

And so life, whether funny or not, suddenly didn't seem so bad.

'What was your plan exactly?' Yashiro wanted to know.

'Plan?'

'If you really did stop working for them. And kept it all up just so they wouldn't get suspicious. What was your plan? Your end game?'

Doumeki considered the question. He had considered it himself, if somewhat more abstractly. In truth, ever since the day he decided, there was only one thing that drove his every move.

'I wanted to stay with you,' he said. 'And protect you. From everyone. The cops and the Yakuza and anyone else. I just wanted to stay with you. Boss.'

Silence.

'Were you ever planning to tell me?'

Another silence.

 _I was afraid to. I knew you would cast me aside, exactly like you did. I couldn't bear to see the look in your eye that I saw that day._

'I don't know, Boss.'

Yashiro tilted up his chin and met Doumeki's eyes. The emotion there tugged at Yashiro's heart in a very real way.

'I wanted to,' Doumeki added quietly.

Though Yashiro's own hurt was still there, curled in a little ball in the pit of his stomach, he tried to imagine everything from Doumeki's perspective. Now that he knew, now that the thinnest and most impossible of voices had been vindicated and he knew Doumeki had been his almost from the start, he tried to empathise.

He tried to mentally track everything Doumeki had been through over the past few months, right until he blew his own cover that night.

And he stepped onto a familiar prickly bed of anxiety.

Doumeki had been entirely too reckless. He had put himself on the line far too many times. Bullets skimming past his head. The knife wound on his face. The bullets he took for Yashiro. The finger he sliced off for Yashiro. The job and the life he forsook for Yashiro. All for Yashiro. Always for Yashiro.

Dawn poured slowly over the buildings, weak and watery behind clouds. Doumeki remembered how bright it had seemed that day. His first day on the job.

Yashiro, his eyes also on the breaking dawn, thought of Ryuuzaki. How he had escaped it all. How it had taken one final push and he was now a ghost.

He found himself wondering how easy it might be.

* * *

The thought flitted about in his mind, playful and dangerous and tempting. It was still there by the time he lifted himself slightly so Doumeki, who looked about ready to drop, could slide onto the bed and rest his head.

Yashiro lay his head on his chest. Doumeki's arm circled him. Boss' hair was soft on his skin.

He took the cigarette butt Yashiro handed to him and placed it on the nightstand.

'The commissioner will know you've been made,' Yashiro observed almost lazily. 'And everyone on this side of the fence will want you dead. Misumi might even do it himself. Well not _himself._ Doubt he'd get his own hands dirty like that. He'd send one of his minions. Either way, if I were you, I would sleep with one eye open. Every night.'

Doumeki heard the faint note of mischief in Yashiro's voice. Like he was working his way up to something.

'Unless...' Yashiro said. The word hovered in the air above them.

Doumeki waited. _Unless?_

Then Yashiro laughed suddenly.

'You remember Kou-sensei, right?'

'Yes.'

'Remember when I told her we weren't about to give up the Yakuza life and open up a bed and breakfast anytime soon?'

Doumeki remembered. But he was too drowsy to try to piece together what Boss was trying to say.

In the pause that followed, Yashiro sobered a little. He took a deep, thoughtful breath.

'No such thing as a Yakuza happy ending,' he said to himself quietly, echoing what he had said to Yoneda.

His fingers slipped beneath Doumeki's open shirt and gently grazed his chest. Doumeki tried to keep his eyes on Boss for as long as he could before falling asleep. He longed to know what Boss was thinking.

 _I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid of what it'll do to me if I lose you._

Doumeki fell asleep. And Yashiro kept thinking.


	10. Phone Sex: YashiroDoumeki Style

_Author's note:_ _A bit of sex, a bit of fluff, no angst._

 _This was a scene from my long story Careful Now. I'm reposting it here because it was one of my absolute favourite scenes to write. It's also here because I wanted a light-hearted buffer between two serious stories: the previous one about Doumeki being an undercover cop, and the next one which is an Omegaverse AU that I'm really excited to be posting soon. Look out for that one in the coming day or so!_

 _Meanwhile, hope you enjoy Yashiro and Doumeki having phone sex! Xx_

* * *

 **Setting:** Hotel room in Taipei, Taiwan

 **Cast:** Yashiro (tired, bored, slightly sexually frustrated)

 **Train of thought:** Mob meeting; wondering who tried to off him last week; sex with Doumeki; sex with seven Doumeki's

He loosened his tie and fell on the bed with a huff, shoes still on. It was an overcast evening so sunset didn't make much of an impression over the Taipei skyline.

He would have loved cloaks, chants and virgin sacrifices.* Instead it had been meeting after meeting after brown-nosing after schmoozing after drinking after bar after strip club. True, it was his first time understanding the extent of mob connections. The truly global nature of their particular industry. And he rather enjoyed Misumi shoving him into the limelight like a proud father. But everything else was a drag. Insurance salesmen at a conference. The only thing missing was name tags.

Misumi pulled him aside at one stage to tell him that Amou was trying to get to the bottom of the shoot-out the previous week.

'Thank him for me,' Yashiro said. 'Although, between you and me, I always thought he was a bit shady. I bet he's the mastermind behind all these kill-Yashiro plots.'

'He's on speakerphone and just heard you.'

' _Hello, Yashiro._ '

'Hey, Amou! I'm onto you.'

' _Okay._ '

The hotel room and its view were quite nice. The bed was huge. It reminded Yashiro of a wedding cake. He felt his body sink slowly into the depths of the cloud-like quilt. There was a complimentary chardonnay and glass sitting on the sideboard. All that was missing was a good, thick cock and a nice hard body attached to it. Maybe even a pair of intent slanted eyes over a solid jaw. Wide shoulders. Hands like dinner plates.

Closing his eyes, he recalled all the burning, searing, throbbing details of their single bout of sex-having.* What a bout it had been.

He wondered how Doumeki would react if he told him it was the best sex he'd had. That he could remember. In recent memory, at the very least. Even with all those disclaimers, the poor boy's head would explode.

Yashiro propped his chin on his hand to consider the trophy more carefully. Okay, the best sex he'd had, in recent memory, with one person. It's not fair, after all, to put Doumeki up against three cocks working simultaneously. Or seven. You just can't beat math.

He suddenly imagined three Doumeki's. Seven Doumeki's. All trying to break him, all frustrated and trying to beat each other to him.

And with that image, he was at full mast. He reached for his phone.

It only took one ring.

'Boss?'

'What the… did you tape your phone to your forehead or something?'

'No.'

'Never mind. Get your cock out.'

'What?'

'The thing in your pants. Take it out. Now.'

'I'm at the grocery store.'

'Even better.'

A pause. Yashiro sighed and took pity on him.

'How far away is your place?'

'I drove.'

'Oh, good. Get in the car.'

Footsteps, a car door opening and closing. Yashiro took the opportunity to light a cigarette and unbuckle his belt to release his hard-on; an impressive sequence for a one-handed man on the phone, he thought.

'I'm in the car.'

'Is it secluded enough where you are?'

'It's… not too bad.'

'Take your cock out.'

Metallic clinks, a zipper. 'Okay.'

'Is it hard yet?'

'Not really.'

'Picture me sucking it.'

'Okay.'

'Start stroking.'

A short silence while Yashiro did the same. He placed his cigarette in the ashtray, put the phone on speaker, lay back and moved his hand over his dick at a measured pace, squeezing hard at the top, just enough to hurt.

'Your cock's in my mouth. And I'm jerking myself off. You taste good.'

He heard Doumeki breathe out slowly. He smiled to himself.

'Ever done this before?'

'Done what?'

'Phone sex.'

There was another silence. A thought occurred to Yashiro and he held back a laugh.

'You do _know_ this is phone sex, right?'

'I… it was… I'm just doing what Boss wanted me to.'

Yashiro chuckled softly. 'Jesus, Doumeki.'

A slight grunt. Doumeki seemed to be getting more worked up on his end.

'Hard now, right?'

'Boss?'

'Yeah?'

'Can you… can you say my name again?'

A slow smile crossed Yashiro's face. He sat up, hand still on his cock.

'Doumeki.'

Another low grunt.

'I'm getting up. Turning around. My ass is bare. I'm pulling my cheeks apart.'

Doumeki's breathing was ragged now.

'What are you going to do?' Yashiro prompted.

'I'm… putting it in.'

Yashiro clicked his tongue in frustration. 'What is this, soft core porn? Try again.'

'I'm… fucking you, Boss. I'm fucking you.'

 _And we're up and running._ Yashiro sped up his pace, his own breathing coming out in bursts.

'How does my ass feel?'

'Really good.'

'That's it?'

'Hot. Almost too hot.'

An unexpected flare of excitement. 'Fuck. Is there blood?'

'Uh… no?'

'What?'

'I mean, yes. You're… there's blood.'

'That's because you're so damn big, stupid.' Yashiro closed his eyes and let his head fall back on the bed again, his cock leaking precum at the memory of being torn open by Doumeki.* 'When did you get so big, anyway?'

'I don't know.'

'Shut up.'

'Okay.'

'Bite something.'

'What?'

'Bite me somewhere.'

'I'm biting your… ear.'

'Ear? Okay. How?'

Sitting in his tiny Subaru a little ways in front of the grocery store, his phone in one hand and his cock in the other, Doumeki Chikara suddenly saw it all vividly. In that moment, of all moments. He slipped into the fantasy, a world that was hazy around the edges but bright and clear in the middle, where he was really fucking Yashiro on all fours. He followed his instincts.

'On the lobe. I pull at it really hard with my teeth. It tears a bit. It's bleeding there too.'

Yashiro clenched his teeth, pleasantly surprised. 'Shit.'

'And I'm biting your neck. Leaving marks. Deep ones.'

'There's another you,' Yashiro panted.

'Another me?'

'Yeah, a second Doumeki. In front of me. That's you as well. Shove your cock in my mouth.'

'Okay.'

'Can you feel your cock in my mouth and ass?'

It was a metaphysical struggle but Doumeki managed to do it.

'Yes.'

'How is it?'

'Good. Boss always feels good.'

'Do something with your hands. Both of you. Twist my nipples or something.'

'I've got my hands in your hair,' Doumeki said immediately. 'It's soft.'

 _This guy and my hair_ …

'I'm pulling it so I can fuck your throat better.'

 _There we go._

'And I'm… the other me… is also pulling it from behind.'

Yashiro squirmed. 'I'm close.'

Doumeki grunted in agreement. Their hands were flying over their cocks, their minds full of the same picture.

'Come inside me, Doumeki.'

'Yes, Boss.'

In a few more strokes, Yashiro gasped and came. He heard Doumeki growl softly over the line.

There was heavy breathing on the airwaves for a while afterwards. Yashiro floated in a white haze on his white cloud of a bed. _What... what was this?_ he wondered vaguely.

'Did you come?' he asked.

'Yes,' Doumeki replied between pants.

'Taste it.'

Doumeki hesitated. He lifted his fingers to his lips.

'How does it taste?'

'Weird. Bitter.'

'Kind of like mine?'

'Yours was better.'

Yashiro laughed. He wiped his hand with a tissue, brought the phone in close again and took it off speakerphone.

'Such good manners. Your mother taught you well.'

There was a long, satisfied silence.

'Boss?'

'Hmm?'

 _Are you okay what did you eat where are you going tomorrow who did you see today are you safe?_

'When are you coming back?'

'Don't know.' Yashiro yawned. 'When Misumi says to. Why, do you miss me already?'

'Yes.'

Yashiro's heart skipped a beat. Just one.

'Idiot. Keep something to yourself.'

'Sorry.'

Silence fell again. It settled between and around them comfortably. Yashiro felt his eyelids get heavier. He had to remember to take his shoes off. If Doumeki were here, he'd do it for him.

'Doumeki.'

'Yes, Boss?'

But he'd fallen asleep.

Doumeki didn't hang up. He drove home slowly, the phone wedged between his face and shoulder.

* * *

 ** _*_** _All the asterisks are references to things that happened in my main story. If anyone's interested in what happened leading up to this scene, and all the stuff that happens after, head to_ Careful Now _\- would love to see you there! :)_

 _Speaking of_ Careful Now, _one of my amazing readers Silu-chan is in the middle of writing up the French translation of that story on fanfictionnet, if anyone is a native French speaker, or knows anyone who would prefer the French version! Btw, French Yashiro is a sight to behold! Being French suits him so well - his words and his mannerisms and just everything. Reading Silu-chan's translation even makes me wish that Yashiro's mysterious biological father had been French - it would explain the blonde hair too! *headcanon rolls off in various directions haha!_


	11. Omegaverse: An Alpha in Disguise

_Angst, sex and minimal fluff._

 _Also, quick warning: there are certain themes in this piece that are quite full-on. In fact, there's a specific, semi-political angst in this story that goes beyond canon Saezuru angst, because of the new omegaverse element (and because it's where my imagination went). And I've turned up the dial to 11 on all emotions and all melodrama. So please read at your discretion. But if you're like me and you revel in all that's messed-up in omegaverse and Saezuru and fiction in general, hope you read on and enjoy! Xx_

 _One last thing: I've done a sketch of one of the scenes in this story - Omega Yashiro and Alpha Doumeki having in-heat sex. If anyone wants to have a look, head for my Ao3, same page, same place!_

* * *

Yashiro had known he was infertile for almost as long as he had known that he was an Omega.

In fact, because his stepfather first stole into his room long before he reached puberty, he always idly hypothesised that infertility was his body's way of protecting itself; building up barriers against unwanted pregnancies and against the relentlessness of the outside world. A world in which he had been born weak.

Years later, he wore his infertility as a badge of pride. He would scoff at condoms whenever his Alphas drew them out with shaking hands – if they were in the right state of mind to do so in the first place.

'No need,' he would say with a smile that made quick work of what remained of an Alpha's senses. 'I can't get pregnant. You can come inside me as much as you want.' He would lick his lips and pull the Alpha closer by his tie. 'Dream come true, isn't it?'

But he was always cautious about one thing – his collar. Whether he could get pregnant or not, an unwanted bond was something he went to great lengths to avoid throughout both his teenage and adult life. The closest he had come to slipping up on this count was when one of his subordinates – an Alpha – grew obsessed with him. Out of desperation, the subordinate hid Yashiro's collar and suppressants on the first day of Yashiro's heat cycle, waited, and then pinned him down on his desk. Yashiro didn't like to think what might have happened if Nanahara hadn't burst in at that moment.

The last thing he wanted was to be beholden to one person – any one person – who could so easily discard him after something as simple as a bite. He would lose all his power. He would be nothing more than a child being held down in a room with his mother asleep only metres away.

The subordinate was fired – it was pity that moved Yashiro to spare his life – and from then on, Yashiro told Nanahara that all future hirees were to be Betas, with no exceptions.

He still kept his favourite Alphas on speed-dial; the cop from the OCD, Ryuuzaki, even Misumi (not that Misumi ever took the bait these days – Yashiro noticed he always made himself scarce when Yashiro was due for his heat). But his subordinates, those who were always near him, even on the rare occasion that an unscheduled heat came about or when his suppressants simply didn't work, were all to be passive Betas.

Passive only some respects though, Yashiro thought. He would smile as he watched Nanahara squirm in a combination of discomfort and arousal each time he was privy to one of Yashiro's conquests. He knew Betas could sometimes be a fun ride.

But he much preferred the mindlessness of an Alpha when he responded to an Omega in heat. He preferred to see the way he lost all humanity in his eyes and became nothing more than an animal. Having that kind of power over Alphas made Yashiro's toes curl.

And he could see that there was something of an Alpha in Doumeki's eyes the moment Yashiro saw him. Everything about him reeked of an Alpha.

Except for the fact that they had met in the middle of Yashiro's heat. Doumeki had pulled the cop off Yashiro, both the cop and Yashiro dripping in sweat and arousal, the specific smell of an Alpha and Omega's sex filled the room, Yashiro's heat especially permeating through all the hallways, enough that even some of the Betas struggled to concentrate on their work.

And Doumeki hadn't responded to it at all.

'Are you okay, sir?'

An immensely deep voice. Words delivered in a steady monotone; as expressionless as his eyes.

Yashiro had panted, his body aflame with a need that had quickly turned into frustration when his Alpha was pulled off him.

'Of course I'm fine, you moron.'

Doumeki Chikara was tall and broad and silent and fiercely handsome in that way that said he had no idea of his own self-worth. Yashiro took to him immediately. And then Nanahara sold him on the rest.

'We're short on people at the moment. And he's not good at talking so I thought we could use him as a bodyguard. You wanted one, right Boss? Oh, plus he's a Beta,' Nanahara added. 'So, you know, no problems there.'

They had stared at each other properly for the first time in Yashiro's office. Doumeki's gaze was impassive, hiding his nerves, hiding his strange sense of overwhelmment. And Yashiro's gaze was benign but scrutinising. Everything about Doumeki, Yashiro thought again, reeked of an Alpha, no matter what he claimed to be. The way Yashiro's pulse crept up was a sign.

But nothing could have proved that Doumeki was a Beta more emphatically than the fact that he refused to get hard, even in Yashiro's mouth.

He still tested Doumeki to be sure. He didn't relax fully until he was sure that Doumeki was a bull without any horns. He forced Doumeki to watch other Alphas fuck him. He neglected his suppressants during one heat cycle and kept Doumeki close (and kept Nanahara and Sugimoto close, unsure if he could handle an unleashed Alpha the size of Doumeki). He sucked Doumeki's limp cock more times than he could count. And still nothing. And so, when the proof seemed overwhelming, he allowed himself to settle into the thrill of having a new Beta plaything.

After all, who had ever heard of an impotent Alpha?

* * *

'I'm going to take a bath.'

'Okay, Boss.'

Yashiro closed the door behind him, turned on the faucets and stripped, unaware that in a few short weeks when he lost the use of his right arm, even such simple acts would become obstacles. Steam slowly filled the room.

Then he glanced at the door. He imagined Doumeki in the kitchen, drawing out plates and cutlery.

When Yashiro had learned of the awful reasons behind Doumeki's impotence, his suspicions came to the fore again. Here, suddenly, was a valid reason why even an Alpha might lose all sex drive. Perhaps Doumeki was an Alpha after all. In the end though, Yashiro reasoned, impotent Alpha and impotent Beta both amounted to the same thing, as far as Yashiro was concerned. A bull without the horns.

And yet, he opened one of the drawers beneath the sink and drew out his spare collar. He fastened it around his neck, casting another wary glance at the door, before he stepped into the bathtub.

* * *

Doumeki felt himself slipping. And what was worse, he knew that Yashiro could tell. There wasn't much that escaped that sly, shrewd, perfect gaze.

He reasoned to himself in the same way Yashiro did. True, he had lied about being a Beta. But there was no Alpha left in him anymore. Not after seeing the look in his sister's eyes as their father rutted into her from above.

He had heard in passing that the beautiful Young Leader of Shinseikai only hired Betas. And so when Nanahara approached him for the first time about the position of bodyguard and then asked him about his status, he had lied instinctively. He had enough connections to forge his documents in kind.

As much as he disliked watching Yashiro open himself up to every Alpha who wanted him, it didn't take much for Doumeki to rein himself in over the first month. If Yashiro wore his infertility as a badge of pride, Doumeki did the same with his impotence. His impotence and his white lie about being a Beta were his ticket to a new life. His ticket to staying by Yashiro's side.

But he began slipping. Slowly. Something stirred the day he watched Yashiro touching himself, oozing fluids from his hole, sending out pheromones by the droves – pheromones that hadn't affected Doumeki until that moment. He didn't know what it was; perhaps a combination of the fact that his own words were turning Yashiro on like that, the alluring way Yashiro's long, bare legs were crossed, the look on face, the fact that his head was in Doumeki's lap.

He had escaped that situation by grace of yet another lie ('I... can't remember the rest') and by leaving the room, his mind spinning.

From then on, his dislike of watching Yashiro with other men became something far stronger.

And Yashiro had noticed. Doumeki was sure of it. Yashiro always noticed. In fact, he was confused about why Yashiro hadn't yet fired him. He didn't know that Yashiro was confused about it himself.

* * *

Years ago, when Misumi and Yashiro slowly eased out of their sexual relationship, Misumi did what he always did – he leaned into his feelings of possessiveness, hoping it would shield his possessiveness.

'Have you ever thought about... fated pairs?' he asked once, gruffly, amazed he had even managed to make the words come out of his mouth.

That was the day Yashiro had been made second-in-command of Shinseikai and Misumi had taken him out to celebrate. Yashiro wore his collar, like he always did when he was due to start his heat cycle. Misumi noted the looks Yashiro gathered as he walked, ranging from lust to disgust to resentment – resentment that an Omega had the audacity to give off such an aura of self-assuredness and even superiority. Resentment that he wore a collar as though it was something to be proud of, rather than ashamed of. It was a kind of resentment that had twined itself around Hirata's heart in particular. And Misumi walked beside him, glaring at anyone whose eye he met.

Paternal thoughts, he told himself. Think only paternal thoughts.

It was almost easy to do when Yashiro laughed a short, childish laugh. He leaned back in his chair at the restaurant.

'Fated pairs? You're joking, right?' Then his look changed and he cocked his head to the side. 'Or is it that you're offering, Oyaji?'

Misumi was thoroughly annoyed to feel a flush claim his cheeks.

'If we were a fated pair we'd know by now,' he muttered under his breath, nodding awkwardly at the waiter who topped up their wine glasses. He didn't have to look at Yashiro to know they were thinking of heated fucks on office floors, desks, walls. Binds and gags. A heat that had claimed them both for a long time.

Far too long, Misumi thought.

'I can't believe you believe in that kind of crap,' Yashiro teased.

'I don't.'

Misumi didn't, really. But sometimes, in the past, when he watched Yashiro sleeping beside him, during the odd occasion they were both too exhausted to move afterwards, he had wondered. Sometimes even hoped.

Paternal thoughts, he told himself now, a little wearily.

'I'm just saying maybe it's time you stopped being so loose,' he said, trying and failing to sound nonchalant. 'As second-in-command of Shinseikai, there's a certain moral standard you need to uphold –'

'Moral standard,' Yashiro laughed, as though it was a game that children had made up. 'I'll keep my collar and my suppressants handy. They're the only promises I can make.'

'Yashiro –'

'Did you really think you'd be able to make an honest man out of me like that? Enticing me with the bullshit idea that my _fated pair_ was wandering around out there?' He gestured vaguely towards the restaurant windows with his wine glass.

'Worth a try.'

'You know what I think? I think _you_ believe it.' Yashiro leaned forwards on his elbows. 'You believe in fated pairs and soul bonds and all that, don't you, Oyaji? The big, tough Alpha Yakuza leader, secretly hoping to be swept off his feet by his fated Omega.'

'For God's sake, I was just –'

'Hey, maybe Amou's your fated pair. You guys could make history as the only ever fated Alpha and Beta pair. He's probably praying to the gods for it every night.'

Misumi sighed, drained his wine glass and beckoned to the waiter for more. Meanwhile, Yashiro's smirk never left his face.

* * *

Doumeki's desire to stay by Boss' side at all costs was being increasingly hampered by his growing desire to have Boss. To defile him and taste his sweet nectar and smell his need and plunge into his heat and bite that tender place in his neck that would make him his, Doumeki's, forever. Irrevocably and unquestioningly.

Those two things – his desire to stay and his desire to have – were pulling in such complete opposite directions that Doumeki often forgot who he was and what he was doing. He had taken Yashiro's hot, hard cock into his mouth several times, and somehow managed to stop himself there. Luckily, Yashiro had only been horny during those times, never in heat. Doumeki had always finished himself off in the bathroom, unbenownst to Yashiro.

The two of them kept deluding themselves and each other, like it was a dangerous game. They kept up the facade that Doumeki was nothing more than a Beta. That there wasn't something between them, pulsing and unignorable and real. Something that made Yashiro angrily recall his conversation with Misumi.

Doumeki's dreams were filled with gold hair and an enigmatic smile. Images of a twisted, marked body writhing beneath him, calling his name.

Dislike became resentment became out-and-out jealousy. Protectiveness became possessiveness became obsession became… something yet stronger. And he finally lost control, almost completely, when Yashiro leaned in to lick the fresh knife wound on his face and pulled him into the backseat of the car.

Yashiro hadn't even gone into heat. But he was hard. And wet. And his scent overpowering.

 _'Ah…_ Doumeki, you… you don't have to lick it. Just suck it and I'll finish quickly.'

 _And then I can ignore that Alpha glint in your eye. And I can stop leaking from that place. I can stop pulsing and craving more. Just finish me off, please._

And Doumeki felt something else take control of his hands. He lifted Yashiro's hips up, right up, so he could finally delve into that place that had invaded his wet dreams. He lapped at Yashiro's nectar, thrusting his tongue as far in as it could go, hearing Yashiro gasp in shock, hearing his moans spiral out of his control.

 _This is bad. Any more than this… and I won't be able to stop._

But somehow he stopped. He waited outside the car until his erection subsided, thanking all the gods that Yashiro hadn't gone into heat. At least they had been spared from that disaster. Doumeki would simply… simply be more careful from now on. He could do that.

He opened the car door to see Yashiro sleeping soundly.

* * *

Yashiro awoke feeling worse than he had felt in a long time. His arm was throbbing; sharp spikes of pain superimposing the constant dull ache. He felt around with his other arm blindly. His painkillers. His suppressants. Neither of them within reach.

He came to terms with where he was – the tiny, bare apartment that made him feel like he had travelled backwards in time. He realised he needed to find his medication, and soon. The suppressants weren't overly important – he was weeks away from his scheduled heat. But he needed the pain in his arm to stop.

Then came Doumeki fresh out of the shower, naked, and Yashiro's heart leaped to his throat. Seeing him again made it all flood back. That pull he didn't understand. Something drawing him to Doumeki in a way that he knew was dangerous.

And yet he played with it, like playing with fire. He pushed Doumeki back until he was lying on the futon. He gyrated his hips, moving them back and forth, torturing him, torturing them both, keeping that monster beneath him alive, pressing hard against his ass. He had lost control of his words. And his mind, in a way. He didn't know what had come over him.

He understood even less when Doumeki kissed him for the first time in the shower. When he was towelled off gently on the futon, in a way no one had ever done for him before. He felt like a child.

And then, suddenly, he felt like anything but a child.

It started deep in his chest – a sudden fire he had experienced countless times before. It spread over his whole body, concentrating there, where it started, as well as in his cock, his ass, and his head. It was a real, enveloping heat. His heat. Weeks early, in front of Doumeki.

Doumeki, whose eyes were no longer familiar.

Doumeki, who finally lost all control.

* * *

He stared at the way Yashiro crouched before him, the sweat that had broken out and mingled with the dampness from the shower, his hair lying flat, falling into eyes that were suddenly lost behind a haze of lust, moans erupting like small puffs as he doubled over, a hand grasping his chest.

Doumeki's breathing was suddenly laboured.

Yashiro's scent. Dear God, his scent.

'Dou… Doumeki,' Yashiro gasped, eyes watering, imploring. 'My suppressants… in the car…'

He knew, though, that nothing he said would make any difference. He could smell his own arousal, and Doumeki's. And the look in Doumeki's eye confirmed the situation beyond doubt.

Yashiro was an Omega who had gone into heat before a primed and virile Alpha.

He was pulled into a kiss that was hard and fast and unrelenting. Doumeki's body was no longer his own, it was a white-hot electricity controlled by something else – whatever it was that had manipulated Yashiro's body in the car, now multiplied several times over. And before Yashiro had a chance to catch his breath, Doumeki had suddenly pushed him backwards onto the futon, hands holding him down, his weight crushing him.

And Yashiro realised how badly he wanted to be crushed. How much he needed Doumeki inside. Doumeki reared back and Yashiro saw it again in his eyes, that feral, animal look of wanton need that he had seen in a long line of Alphas before Doumeki, and none of whom had ever inspired the feeling that was now surging from the pit of Yashiro's stomach.

Doumeki pressed himself hard between Yashiro's legs, his erection straining against his pants, hands clawing at Yashiro's thighs, moving lower, pushing, probing, until his fingers breached Yashiro's body and made him whimper. Doumeki ran his tongue, flat, against the side of Yashiro's neck, tasting his sweat and scent.

 _Collar,_ Yashiro realised breathlessly. He didn't have it with him; he never bothered keeping it nearby if he was weeks ahead of his heat. Panic filled him in a cold rush.

'Doumeki, stop! We can't –!'

He heard his own words, but his heart and body cried out for more. More. More of Doumeki, more of him everywhere, in his deepest places.

And it was like Doumeki heard the words he didn't say. He pulled his cock out and rubbed it against Yashiro's dripping hole, panting and sweating. His weight was too much. Yashiro couldn't push him off.

'No, wait! Don't –!'

But Doumeki pushed in for the first time. Yashiro's body opened for him, pulled him in, grasped him sweetly and urgently, with a gasp – almost a sigh of relief – that both felt in their very cores. Yashiro's head fell back and his moan was absorbed by the small room. Doumeki's head fell forwards onto his chest, low, tortured groans emanating from his own throat.

And then he rocked backwards slightly before he started thrusting, hammering, with an ancient, primal need. And Yashiro clung to him and cried out, his body opening to receive his mate, his fingers and nails digging into what he could to hold Doumeki there – his back, his arms.

Each time Yashiro cried out, Doumeki clenched his teeth and plunged deeper, sometimes holding himself there for a beat or two, as though trying to feel for it, for a wall or some kind of sign that he had gone as far as he had possibly could.

'Boss,' he would sometimes hiss, his voice tight.

'Oh, Doumeki! Hah! _Ahhn!'_

Doumeki bent down and covered Yashiro's nipples in saliva until they glistened. He pulled at them gently with his teeth as his cock plunged. He felt Yashiro's hand in his hair.

'Mmmh, fuck! Yes! Ah!'

Despite being caught between his fear and desire, Yashiro occasionally lent words to his innermost feelings.

 _I want him to make my body cry out in pain. Just as it has so many times before. Treat me the way the way they've always treated me._

'Harder! Ugh! Make it… hurt more!'

Doumeki was too lost for words. If he could speak through his haze, he would have explained why he didn't want to. Why it was enough, surely it was enough, what was already happening. With every thrust, he felt his cock get immersed in Yashiro's overwhelming, overflowing natural lubrication.

With a shuddering breath, Doumeki pulled out and turned Yashiro over. When he was on his hands and knees, Doumeki pulled him up and back, wanting suddenly to feel Yashiro's entire weight in his arms, to manipulate every piece of him. Yashiro's head fell back again, this time on Doumeki's shoulder, before Doumeki's cock plunged all the way in again, far enough for Yashiro to feel its base and Doumeki's bristly pubic hair pressing against his flesh.

'Ah!' he gasped, eyes watering. 'So... deep!'

Doumeki hooked his hands beneath Yashiro's knees, held him upright and pounded, pushing new sounds and smells from Yashiro with every thrust, both lost in the other's pheromones.

And suddenly, a single, dangerous thought filled Doumeki's mind.

 _Mine._

He ran his tongue over the side of Yashiro's face and revelled in his moans. His pleas.

'Ah, Doumeki! Yes, don't stop! Oh, I'm going to come!'

 _Mine_ , Doumeki thought again, in a voice that didn't sound like his.

 _I'm going to make you mine. Mine and no one else's._

And then, finally, the urge became too great. Without warning, he pushed Yashiro face-down onto the bed. Yashiro gasped and his stomach lurched. Doumeki was still buried deep inside him and his weight was suffocating once more.

And then he felt Doumeki's broad, hot tongue on the back of his neck. Marking out a place.

Yashiro's breath caught in his throat. That same panic filled him again. His neck tingled.

'No!'

 _Do it!_

'Doumeki, don't! Please!'

 _Do it, Doumeki. Oh, God, do it. Make me yours. I'm yours._

Doumeki bared his teeth for a split second before sinking them into Yashiro's flesh. He felt the skin break. Blood seeped into his mouth and he came hard at the same time.

* * *

It was the only thing Doumeki did that hurt.

It made Yashiro come.

And then it made him faint.

* * *

By the time Yashiro awoke again, it was dark outside and he had no idea how much time had passed. The pain in his arm had returned with a vengeance.

And then he felt something far worse. A telling, awful numbness in the back of his neck.

He sat up and reached for it. He felt the outline of a bandage of some kind. Gauze, perhaps. He turned to Doumeki, who slept beside him, breathing gently and evenly.

He flushed as he remembered. He remembered every second of it, even through the heat-induced veil. He remembered every touch. Every plunge. The pain and ecstasy of the bite. The bite that bound him to Doumeki for the rest of his life.

He felt sick.

He sat there on the edge of the futon, his mind alternating between memories of his stepfather and the vindictive thrill he felt when other Alphas fucked him and mauled at his collar, desperate to bite him, leaving only dents in the thin metal. Doumeki was worse than all of them. He had taken Yashiro's power from him. Forever. And there was nothing Yashiro could do.

Nothing except slowly get to his feet, gingerly put his clothes back on, and leave the flat, just as his phone lit up and started buzzing.

* * *

Doumeki expected the call from Nanahara telling him that he had been fired. In fact, he half-expected Yashiro to have sent a few underlings over to beat him up, or worse.

'What the hell did you do this time?' Nanahara demanded. 'Boss sounds like he really friggin' hates you.'

Doumeki remained silent.

* * *

And Yashiro remained silent on that count as well. Some of his subordinates noticed the edge of gauze that poked above his collar. When it was less tender and Yashiro was able to remove it, it was less conspicuous. But anyone looking closely could see the mark.

No one dared ask him about it, of course.

He felt it inside him. That pull to Doumeki. He knew that he could fire him, send him away, he could run away himself, and none of it would matter. Something would connect him to Doumeki, his body would yearn for him, no matter what he tried. He could feel it like the proverbial red thread, only it felt more like a coursing, living channel linking him to wherever Doumeki was.

And the worst part was that he alone felt it. It was the Omega's curse. Alphas were free to do whatever they wanted. Mark as many as they wanted.

He thought that was the reason he began to be physically sick. It even happened once in the middle of a meeting. And so, when urged by Nanahara, who had been left behind to apologise for the fact that his boss had thrown up into a pot plant, Yashiro agreed to see Kageyama.

* * *

Only Kageyama suspected what it might be. He glimpsed the bite on Yashiro's neck when he came into the clinic. It looked around a week old. He listened as Yashiro described his symptoms in a voice that affected his usual carelessness but somehow fell short, as though the wind had been taken out of his sails.

He also wondered about the strange little emotion that crept up inside him when he saw the bite. He wondered whose it was. He tried to wrap his head around the fact that Yashiro was bonded. He wondered, more than a little uncomfortably, if he ought to bring it up.

The tests he ran confirmed his suspicions. And then he sat before Yashiro with the results.

It took Yashiro a few tries to understand what he was being told. He had expected to be given medication for something. Anything. Vertigo even.

Anything but this.

Kageyama waited. He had sat at that desk and delivered the same news to many patients over the years. And he had seen reactions that ranged from cries of elation to manic depression. And though he knew he couldn't expect any of the former from Yashiro, he didn't know exactly what to –

Yashiro got to his feet suddenly, so fast that blood rushed to his head and he felt dizzy. He threw out an arm to keep from falling and scattered a tray of scalpels and equipment.

Kageyama was alarmed. 'Yashiro!'

'Get rid of it,' Yashiro said, his voice quiet and thin.

Kageyama's stomach flipped over at the expression on Yashiro's face. It was fear. Fear and disgust.

'What?'

'Get it – get it out of me. Right now, Kage! I don't want it. _Get it out!'_

Yashiro took a step backwards. He didn't know where to go. How to escape himself. Kageyama held out his hands bracingly and stood up, suddenly scared too. Scared for Yashiro and everything he had been through. It was a side of Yashiro that Kageyama had never seen before.

'Listen,' he said, as soothingly as he could. 'I – my clinic doesn't have those kinds of facilities. But I can give you the number of a colleague of mine. His practice isn't far from here. I can get you in without an appointment. Okay?'

Yashiro stared, breathing heavily, his arm in a sling and his eyes utterly lost.

For the first time in his life, Kageyama felt the urge to put his arms around Yashiro and lie to him and tell him everything would be fine. For the first time, he felt as though he himself was to blame for all of it, even though he knew, rationally, there wasn't a single part of it he could have helped.

* * *

No one saw Yashiro for a few days after that. Misumi took over what he could and Nanahara scrambled to make up the rest. Misumi alone knew why, and even his knowledge was based on a quick, mumbled phone call in which Yashiro told him he had gotten pregnant and had taken care of it. He was fine, and would be ready to come back to work in a few days.

'Yashiro –' Misumi had said in shock.

The line went dead. After that, Yashiro didn't answer his phone or his front door for anyone.

So Doumeki waited outside it.

Nanahara had caved to his instincts, rather than his voice of reason, and called Doumeki to tell him that Yashiro had been a no-show for a while and that even Misumi looked like he was worried about him. Nanahara's instincts kicked off Doumeki's own, which were a lot stronger where Yashiro was concerned, and Doumeki left for Yashiro's flat without needing any further incentive.

Yashiro knew who it was when he knocked, even before Doumeki hesitantly called, 'Boss?' He knew that, at some point, Doumeki would be in his life again. And although he was mildly surprised it was Doumeki who had come to him and not the other way round – although he was grateful he had at least been spared that humiliation – it didn't alleviate the grisliness he had been carrying inside him for days.

So he stayed in bed.

Every Omega had had the procedure at least once in their lives. It was quick and almost painless and no longer carried the stigma it once did. It was part and parcel of a world where passions took hold, paying little mind to reason.

Yashiro's infertility had protected him until then. Collars, suppressants, condoms. Infertility and impotence. Somehow, in spite of all that, life had happened. As though the powerful, pulsing connection that drew Yashiro and Doumeki to one another had found nowhere else to go and had concentrated in something like that.

It was dangerous. It was volatile. And now, thanks to the bite on his neck, it was inescapable. He couldn't even fathom the thought of sleeping with any other man.

His instincts continued to inform him that Doumeki was there, always there, sitting on the other side of the door. He knew that the sound of the door being unlocked was all it would take.

And so on the second day, a full day and night after Doumeki first knocked, Yashiro watched, as though from outside, as he went to the door and unlocked it. He turned and took a few steps back into his apartment, hearing the door quietly open and close behind him. He imagined Doumeki standing there, a few feet away, and he hated how the thought made his body flush with a heady cocktail of relief and anticipation.

Doumeki's eyes travelled up the length of Yashiro's body. He wore a loose navy robe and his hair was unkempt. He could tell, without seeing, that Yashiro's fringe fell into his eyes again, like it did the last time he saw him. He longed to touch him. But he had to hold his ground for as long as he possibly could.

'Boss –' he began.

'What?' Yashiro suddenly said. A single word that was quiet but delivered in a kind of snap; a kind of harshness that was enough to make Doumeki flinch. Yashiro turned. 'What could you possibly have to say? Have you spent a whole day thinking it up? It'd better be good.'

Doumeki stared, at a loss.

'Or maybe you didn't come to talk at all,' Yashiro said, hearing that he was losing control of his voice and his words again. He gestured openly with his left hand, his right hand remaining useless in its sling. 'Maybe you've just come to fuck me. To claim what's yours. Is that why you're here?'

'No, Boss,' Doumeki finally managed, feeling his self-loathing claim him again, though it had never really left him since the morning he awoke to find Yashiro was gone. He tried to fight the high, cruel inner voice that told him he was just like his father. 'I'm... sorry, Boss.'

 _'I'm sorry, Boss,'_ Yashiro mocked. 'That's all you do. Apologising is all you ever do. _I'm sorry, I'm sorry._ Are you also sorry you got me pregnant?'

Doumeki felt like he had been punched in the gut.

Yashiro's eyes were manic again, like Doumeki had only seen on rare occasions. It made his insides feel cold.

'Are you sorry that I got rid of it?' An awful, twisted smile. Eyes that were still glassed-over with an emotion that neither of them could identify. And then his voice broke. 'Are you sorry because it was… because it was ours? Are you sorry because it could have been... anything.'

Heart pounding, still struggling to process the two bombs that had gone off in quick succession, Doumeki covered the distance between them and pulled Yashiro against him, eyes wide and fixed on the far wall. He was surprised that Yashiro didn't relent. As though his own words had winded him.

Yashiro himself didn't understand, at first, what he meant when he had said, _it_ _could have been anything._ Then he realised.

What had happened to him had scared him more than anything else in his life. His stepfather had threatened to impregnate him time and time again, to make Yashiro bear his child and reveal his depravity to his mother and the whole world; a rough, constant slew of words that it took Yashiro years to figure out were nothing more than threats made to heighten his stepfather's sexual thrill. But it still frightened him when it finally became real, even thirty years later. And so he had expelled it. He had removed it from his disgusting, marred, filthy body because it didn't stand a chance with him. He didn't know if he was disgusted more at it or himself.

But over the past few days, he realised that the thing that had scared him so much could have _been_ so much. It could have been so many things. Things that didn't have to frighten him. It could have been tall, like Doumeki, but with Yashiro's smile and wit. It could have been a girl, and she might have been brilliant and precocious and she might have doted on her strong, silent Alpha father.

Tears again. For some reason, it felt like he had cried in Doumeki's arms countless times, even though this was the very first.

'Are you… are you sorry for that?' he demanded, his words muffled in Doumeki's shoulder. 'Are you sorry for…?'

Doumeki was sorry for all of it. And Yashiro was too, but neither could express what it was they had lost, precisely.

All Doumeki knew was that it didn't matter. It didn't matter as long as Yashiro was his and as long as he could be there to nurse all of Yashiro's scars, just as Yashiro had unknowingly done for him. He couldn't think of how to say it.

But he had to try.

'We're bonded now,' he said, his voice low and somewhat unsteady. 'We're s–soul bonded.'

He hated the fact that his words were hesitant when the feelings behind them weren't hesitant at all. He was frustrated because he knew _why_ the words were hesitant; he had heard them before and never once, in his wildest dreams, thought he could ever apply them to himself. He never had a reference point for all that they meant. How could he have known that such simple, alien words could capture a feeling as golden and heavy as this? This sense that he had finally come home.

'We're bonded now,' he repeated, more firmly. He gently drew his fingers along his mark. 'And I'm never leaving you again, Boss.'

Yashiro pulled back and looked at him. His eyes, in that moment, were unreadable again, but Doumeki felt them cut through him as though trying to seek out the lie.

'I'm never leaving you,' Doumeki repeated, wondering if he was saying the right thing or completely the wrong thing. 'I'm –'

 _I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to keep all other men away from you. I'm going to fuck you through every single one of your heats. I'm going to make you come countless times, and you'll cry out for me, and I'll hold you afterwards and touch your face and your hair for as long as I want. And you'll laugh in my arms and I'll be the luckiest man alive._

Yashiro couldn't think of a single thing to say. The emotion, whatever emotion it was, rolled from his gut through his chest and became caught in his throat. Soul bond. He wanted to laugh and cry.

Doumeki kissed him then and Yashiro frowned slightly as he felt the heat of Doumeki's tongue in his mouth. The warmth of his lips. A hint of stubble. He folded into him. He felt Doumeki's huge hands on his back, moving often to the mark on his neck. His mark. He shivered.

It happened slowly. Yashiro's hold around Doumeki's shoulders and back tightened. It was the same thing Doumeki had experienced long before they forged their physical bond. That sense of helplessness and hollowness was replaced by something whole, and real. Simply by feeling out the contours of his own body as it felt when pressed against Doumeki's, feeling his own breath on Doumeki's skin, Yashiro came into himself. He realised that his old demons, the ones that only showed up when he was weakest, suddenly didn't have as much room. And suddenly Doumeki had lifted him up, wrapped his legs around Doumeki's waist, and Yashiro found he had surrendered completely even before Doumeki took any steps towards the bedroom.

Doumeki knew Yashiro was in no state to do anything, either physically or mentally. All he wanted to do, all he did, was lay Yashiro down on the white sheets, like an artist putting colour on canvas just to see it there, just to know it was there by his own hand.

Meanwhile, Yashiro was realising, slowly, that he had been right before; it was still a kind of powerlessness. Being beholden to someone, having someone stare at him like Doumeki was staring at him, allowing nothing to remain hidden, even the simple fact of being half of a whole – all of it was terrifying. All of it weakened him, just as he knew it would.

But the power that he felt then, in his surrender, in his love for his Alpha, was still power. One that rushed to his head as strongly as any heat.

* * *

It always happened slowly, as Yashiro began to see. Some things did, anyway. The important things. He had wrapped his mouth around Doumeki's soft cock within minutes of meeting him, and yet they shared their first kiss only a week ago. And Yashiro had only slowly come to discover the parts of him that had been empty – the parts he had tried to ignore and would be filled with no warning by the traumas of his childhood – those parts had been filled completely, and cleanly, by Doumeki. By the large man of few words and many secrets.

After Yashiro unlocked his front door and Doumeki came in, a strange few days followed. Neither of them left the apartment. Calls from Misumi and Nanahara and Kageyama went ignored.

Long hours would pass in which neither of them would speak. Yashiro would prop his head on his arm and stare at Doumeki. At the precise structure of his cheekbones and jawline. Doumeki would feel caught in his gaze, pleased and nervous at the same time, wondering if it was a look of discontent or appraisal. Yashiro rarely smiled in those first few days. And Doumeki had no idea how he could bring it about again. He longed to see Yashiro smile. Hear him laugh. At night, Doumeki would guiltily stroke the back of Yashiro's neck and feel a strange desolation, wondering again if he had made a huge mistake.

But he learned, slowly, that Yashiro simply needed time. Things within Yashiro were being unstitched, and other things being stitched back together. He was reconciling memories of his own tiny, bound hands against a weathered tatami mat with the raw, silent power of a soul bond. He was struggling to understand how a man like his stepfather and a man like Doumeki could both be Alphas, and how they could both reside on the same small blue planet.

And eventually, piece by piece, Yashiro came back to him. A few days later, Yashiro's right hand stirred again, enough that Doumeki saw the index finger tremble very slightly. He lifted the hand to his mouth and kissed it. Yashiro's thumb twitched and stroked his lips. Doumeki held back tears and he glanced up to see Yashiro smiling gently.

And Yashiro laughed that same day when Doumeki unknowingly placed an aluminium-lined container in the microwave and caused a small electric explosion.

'You're useless,' Yashiro observed as he carefully unplugged the microwave.

Doumeki had never been more grateful for his culinary failures.

Later that evening, Yashiro lay in his arms, again quiet and serious.

'I'm infertile and you're impotent,' he murmured. 'So of course I'd get pregnant.'

A small pause where Doumeki felt a lump rise to his throat. He tried to imagine all that Yashiro had gone through by himself. He wondered if there was anything he could do, anything either of them could do, to make up for what had happened.

Yashiro sighed and smiled faintly.

'Misumi and Amou aren't the only ones making history.'

Doumeki had no idea what he was talking about, but he was relieved to see Yashiro smiling again.

* * *

Yashiro's first heat was a nightmare for them both. He had taken enough suppressants to take down a stallion, but being near Doumeki had triggered his heat regardless. Doumeki clung to his back, unsure if he was holding Yashiro together or holding himself back, ignoring Yashiro's urgent demands for Doumeki to tear off his clothes and fuck him senseless. Teeth clenched, Doumeki reminded himself in a sort of mantra that Yashiro was still recovering from the operation. He rubbed himself against Yashiro's back and made Yashiro come many times using hand-jobs, but nothing was ever enough. Three days later, Yashiro's heat mercifully subsided.

To everyone else's relief, Yashiro returned to work not long after that. Doumeki went with him.

Yashiro's second heat the following month couldn't have been any different from the repression and agony of the first. Yashiro simply kicked everyone out of the office and Doumeki locked the door.

* * *

'I never thought I'd see the day,' Misumi declared wanly. 'The infamous Omega Young Leader and his bonded Alpha bodyguard. They're talking about you two even in headquarters, you know.' He reached for a cigarette with a huff. 'What the hell is the world coming to?'

'I asked myself that the day they invented suppressants,' Yashiro said, lighting up at the same time. 'Takes all the fun out of life, if you ask me.'

Nanahara and Sugimoto noticed the look he threw Doumeki, who was gathering the tea things on the bureau near the door. They made a face at one another. Taking suppressants was something they sorely wished Boss would do more often, especially now that his heats came on without any regularity, with a strength that disturbed an inordinately large percentage of Betas.

In fact, Nanahara was feeling both brave and exasperated enough to bring it up. He waited until Misumi finished up his business with Yashiro and left.

He took a deep breath.

'Boss?'

'Mm?'

'We think you should start going on your meds again.'

Yashiro was mildly surprised.

'What for?'

 _We're sick of how often we have to hear you getting ploughed by your fucking bodyguard._

'They've hired a few more Alphas downstairs,' Nanahara replied, somewhat stiffly. 'Last time, we ended up having to knock some guy out to stop him from breaking down the door.'

Yashiro sat at his desk and leaned back, looking unconcerned. In fact, his mind wandered down a different path.

'Such a pity that even the thought of fucking them makes me want to throw up.' He flicked another glance at Doumeki who was taking away the tea tray. 'No need to look so smug over there.'

Doumeki's expression was as deadpan as ever. But all those in the room knew him well, and they could tell that he was, indeed, very happy at the thought.

'Boss,' Nanahara tried again, realising the conversation had derailed before it had even started. 'Can we talk about –?'

Doumeki sensed it first without even having to turn. But Nanahara saw it too, and it cut him off mid-sentence. Sugimoto sensed it from near the door. He had a strategic advantage there; he bolted before anything could be asked of him.

Yashiro was suddenly sweating and gasping, heat filling his head, and his gaze fixed on Doumeki who was at his side in a heartbeat.

The eight Alphas elsewhere in the building suddenly dropped what they were doing. Many Betas, Nanahara included, felt a little hot under the collar. It was a particularly strong heat. It always was whenever the bodyguard was around.

Some of the more resistant Betas observed their peers in slight amusement. Team managers sighed in frustration when their best workers suddenly ran for stairwells.

'Nanahara,' Yashiro gasped, even as Doumeki heaved him out of the chair and onto the desk, lips already on Yashiro's neck and hands unbuttoning his vest. 'Nana… hara… door.'

Nanahara, who realised he had lingered just a few seconds too long, felt his heart sink. He spun around and saw that Sugimoto had abandoned him.

'Oh, for fuck's – you're going to make me guard the door _again?'_

Doumeki barely had time to feel sorry for Nanahara, and his face didn't register any shift in emotions anyway. And Yashiro, for his part, could only moan.

Slightly flushed, Nanahara grumbled and turned and left. He sat in front of the door and took out his gun, deciding he was in a bad enough mood to actually shoot any fucker who managed to make it past the barricaded stairwell doors.

For Christmas that year, Doumeki bought him a state-of-the-art pair of earplugs and Yashiro bought him a year's subscription to Juggs. So whenever he was stuck on door duty, Nanahara begrudgingly alternated between the two.

* * *

 _ **Author's note:** This was supposed to be a self-contained one-shot but thanks to a few lovely commenters below, I've continued the Omegaverse in a separate story called Three Alphas and an Omega. If you were a fan of this little universe, hope to hear from you there :)_

 _Also, a quick note on the sex: depending on the mood of the story/AU, I sometimes write canon-Doumeki and other times headcanon-Doumeki in terms of his level of roughness. Although I love my all-out sadist-Doumeki, a gentler Doumeki suits Yashiro and the storyline better in some stories, like the one above, and of course gentle-Doumeki is so beautiful in canon._

 _But in the next story which is a different universe again (back to our regular universe, just a parallel timeline), I bring out my sadist-Doumeki once more, just a little, just because I love him so much, and because my headcanon-Yashiro does too haha! The next one is all fluff – I love sadist-Doumeki in a world of fluff. That one will be coming soon-ish [EDIT: I lied about the next story coming in a week or two - I got sidetracked writing the Omegaverse continuation. Sorry everyone! No estimates for the next Cherry Blossoms installment just yet, but it will definitely happen at some point!] Thank you to everyone who read! 3_


	12. Notice: The Omegaverse Continues

Hi everyone!

This is just a notice to let my _Cherry Blossoms_ subscribers know that I've continued the Omegaverse story in _Three Alphas and an Omega._ Hope to see you there! Please leave love for the fledgling story if you enjoyed the first installment 3

(PS this notice is a temporary 'chapter' and will be replaced by the next story in the Cherry Blossoms collection)


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